Siebel-Led C3.ai More Than Doubles After $651 Million IPO

(Bloomberg) -- C3.ai Inc., the software maker founded by former Oracle Corp. executive Tom Siebel, rose 120% in its trading debut from the price in its $651 million initial public offering.

The shares closed Wednesday at $92.49 in New York, giving the company a market value of about $8.9 billion.

The Redwood City, California-based company sold 15.5 million shares Tuesday for $42 apiece after marketing them for $36 to $38.

In the next few years, the company plans to invest in market share, growth, partnerships and technology,” Siebel said in an interview. He said C3.ai is competing against companies that are trying to build large artificial intelligence platforms for themselves.

“Virtually every one of our customers would have tried to build these enterprise AI platforms once, twice or three times and failed and the effort,” Siebel said.

He said he doesn’t expect the business to be cash positive for a few years, but that it will be after that.

C3.ai has said that big name backers including one of its partners, Microsoft Corp., would acquire shares in a private placement as part of the listing.

Spring Creek Capital, an affiliate of Koch Industries, planned to buy $100 million in common stock while Microsoft would buy $50 million of them at the IPO price, according to an earlier filing.

Earlier this year, C3.ai formed a partnership with Microsoft and Adobe Inc. for a new customer-relationship management software seeking to combat Salesforce.com Inc.

C3.ai’s offering was led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. The company’s shares are trading on the the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AI.

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