C3.ai Share Price More Than Doubles On First Day Of Trading

Shares of Redwood City, California-based C3.ai took off on their first day of trading Wednesday, reaching a high of $115 before eventually settling at $92.49 at market close.

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The price was well above the $42 per share price mark set late Tuesday—which itself was up from a target range of $36 to $38 set earlier this week—allowing the company to raise $651 million through its offering of 15.5 million shares.

The company ended Wednesday with a market cap of $8.79 billion.

C3 sells artificial intelligence software across a variety of different industries, allowing users to build custom applications—without writing code—that can help boost efficiency or predict possible breakdowns. The company was founded in 2009 as an enterprise software developer for energy management.

The company’s top shareholder is Tom Siebel, who founded customer relationship management software firm Siebel Systems which sold to Oracle for $5.85 billion in 2006. Siebel owns 33.9 percent of the company’s pre-IPO Class A stock.

Other large shareholders in the company include TPG Capital, with 22.6 percent of the pre-IPO Class A stock, and Baker Hughes Holdings, with 15.1 percent.

Two other companies that saw their money more than double were Microsoft and Spring Creek Capital, an affiliate of Koch Industries. According to C3’s updated S-1 filing, both companies had concurrent private placements as part of the IPO. Microsoft agreed to buy $50 million of stock at the IPO price of $42 per share and Spring Creek Capital agreed to buy  $100 million of stock at the same price.

C3 had net losses of approximately $33.3 million for its fiscal year ended April 30, 2019, and $69.4 million for the year ended April 30 of this year, according to its S-1. The company reported an accumulated deficit of $293.6 million as of April 30. C3 also reported its top three customers accounted for 34 percent of revenue in 2019 and 44 percent in 2020.

The company has raised a total of $228.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase data. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, The Rise Fund, Breyer Capital, Wildcat Venture Partners, and C3 co-founder Pat House.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.