Bulletins

Shares of Tom Siebel's C3.ai balloon on the first day of trading

The stock surged as much as 143% on its first day of trading.

Shares of C3.ai closed with a gain of 120% on Wednesday, the first day of public trading for the company founded by enterprise software titan Tom Siebel.

A provider of AI-backed products catered to industries like oil and gas, C3.ai initially priced its shares at $42 but the stock closed at $92.49 after trading over $100 throughout the day. It ranked 12 in terms of most successful IPOs this year, according to CNBC. The company was expected to command a market cap of around $4 billion, but closed at nearly $9 billion.

Among the big beneficiaries of the boom is Microsoft, which bought $50 million worth of C3.ai stock that it agreed to hold onto for at least 365 days. C3.ai and Microsoft recently unveiled a partnership with Adobe to release AI-enabled customer relationship management software — a direct challenge to Salesforce.

Joe Williams

Joe Williams is a writer-at-large at Protocol. He previously covered enterprise software for Protocol, Bloomberg and Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JoeWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.

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