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.