C3 AI

C3 AI was founded in 2009 by Thomas Siebel as "C3". Originally the "C" in the company's name was a reference to "carbon" and the "3" was a reference to "measure, mitigate and monetize" because the company's original goal was to help manage corporate carbon footprints. For some time in 2016 the company was named C3IoT and before that was briefly named C3 Energy. ==IPO==

C3 AI held its initial public offering (IPO) on 9 December 2020, listing its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol AI. The company priced its 15.5 million shares at US $42.00 per share, expecting to raise approximately US $651 million in gross proceeds. Concurrently, Spring Creek Capital (affiliated with Koch Industries) and Microsoft purchased US $100 million and US $50 million, respectively, in a private placement at the IPO price. C3 AI's shares more than doubled on their first day of trading, closing at US$92.49 on 9 December 2020 at a market capitalization of US$8.9 billion. Several days later, the stock reached its all-time high close of US$177.47 on 22 December 2020, and the following day it touched an intraday high of US$183.9. Since then the shares prices have fallen and as of June 2024 they were nearly 74% below their first day of trading. In February 2026 shares of C3 AI were trading at US$10.40. Following their IPO C3 AI faced market skepticism and criticism, including that Siebel liquidated shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the months after the IPO. ==References==