American investor Mellody Hobson says Wall Street's Anthropic IPO fixation is 'worrisome'

American investor Mellody Hobson, co-chief executive of Ariel Investments LLC, said the stock market's fixation on Anthropic's planned initial public offering is "worrisome," warning that investors are getting carried away by artificial intelligence.

Hobson, who also owns part of the National Football League's Denver Broncos, made the remarks at an investment conference on Nov. 12. She said get-rich-quick schemes "always end badly" and that Ariel's approach runs against chasing momentum.

"We are not traders; we're investors at Ariel," she said.

A record listing

Her comments come as Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, prepares what would be one of the largest share sales on record. The San Francisco-based company is targeting a Nov. 19 listing that would value it at about $1.4 trillion, with a share sale of about $64 billion, according to reports this week.

AI stocks have driven much of the U.S. market's gains over the past three years, and a run of large technology listings this year has drawn comparisons with the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

Money for women's sports

Hobson said she is putting more of her own capital into women's sports, where team values and media rights deals have climbed quickly. She said she is just getting started.

She joined the Walton-Penner family ownership group that bought the Broncos in 2022 for $4.65 billion, a then-record price for a U.S. sports team.

From Chicago to the boardroom

Hobson, 57, grew up in Chicago and joined Ariel, the Chicago-based firm founded by John W. Rogers Jr., as an intern while a student at Princeton University. She rose to president and later co-CEO.

She has served as chair of Starbucks Corp. and DreamWorks Animation, and sits on the board of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

She is married to filmmaker George Lucas. The couple opened the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles' Exposition Park on Sept. 22, a project budgeted at about $1 billion.