While it hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, the artificial intelligence (AI) boom may reach a major milestone this fall with the initial public offering (IPO) of Anthropic. The fast-growing AI lab plans to raise about $100 billion from investors, giving it a $2 trillion valuation as it spends to remain at the forefront of the world's most advanced AI systems.
Investors have rewarded this company with a premium valuation, but the $100 billion capital raise should help cash flow across the entire AI supply chain, including for power-generation stocks. Here's how the Anthropic IPO could affect power providers like Vistra (VST -1.02%), Bloom Energy (BE -3.42%), and Oklo (OKLO -3.18%) in the coming years.
NYSE: BE
Key Data Points
Core power for data center development
Vistra is a power provider sitting on opportunistic assets in 2026, which is why the stock is up 700% during the past five years. The company is a non-utility power provider, meaning it sells electric power generation directly to wholesalers, such as data center operators.
It has assets ranging across the board, from nuclear to natural gas to solar, allowing it to sell whatever type of power customers are looking for. When electricity demand starts to grow, Vistra can sell its power at even higher prices under long-term deals, locking in revenue streams for many years.
This is exactly what has happened under its 20-year deals with Amazon and Meta Platforms, both of which were signed within the last 12 months. With the Anthropic IPO, the company will have even more cash to plow into cloud computing credits, leading to greater demand for Vistra in the electric power sector and for its AI competitors.
Image source: Getty Images.
Back-up generators and rapid deployments
The urgency from players in the AI race means that speed in data center deployments matters above all else. Bloom Energy serves this need with its innovative generator solutions.
The company's solid oxide modular systems can quickly connect to natural gas sources while simultaneously minimizing emissions usually associated with fossil fuels, a win-win for data center builders. Once a data center officially connects to the electric grid or with a power provider like Vistra, Bloom Energy's generators serve as supplemental electric power and a backup in case of an outage.
Revenue rose 166% year over year last quarter, leading the company to raise its full-year outlook. When Anthropic goes public and has $100 billion to spend, this should flow through to all the competitors in the data center and cloud computing industry, which will be racing to buy Bloom Energy generators.
VST Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts
A long-term bet on power generation
Oklo is also in the power generation game, but on a slightly different timeline than Vistra and Bloom Energy, which are investments in power generation today.
The company is a nuclear power start-up, planning to manufacture isotopes, fuel, and reactors for the entire nuclear energy supply chain. Theoretically, this is a perfect solution for the data center power issue today. However, Oklo does not have a design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is awaiting approval to begin constructing reactors sometime next year.
On its current timeline, Oklo believes it can get a reactor up and running in 2027 or 2028, but unforeseen circumstances almost always delay these deadlines. This makes Oklo a company that could benefit from Anthropic's massive IPO capital raise but likely won't, because it won't have any power to sell until later this decade.
With a market cap of just $6.5 billion and no electric power to sell at the moment, Oklo does not look like a good bet. If you want to bet on industrial power players for the AI boom, Vistra and Bloom Energy look like better stocks to buy.
