When Australia announced new AI rules this week, the companies cheering loudest were the ones you’d expect to oppose them. OpenAI and Anthropic — the two biggest US AI developers not yet on sharemarkets — publicly backed Australia’s regulatory push. The reason isn’t altruism. It’s IPO strategy.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
Big AI companies want regulation because clear rules raise barriers to entry for smaller competitors, make institutional investors more comfortable, and strengthen the narrative for upcoming public listings. OpenAI and Anthropic are following the SpaceX playbook: build a story compelling enough to command a trillion-dollar valuation, and use regulatory frameworks as proof the industry is maturing. Australia’s rules are a small market with global precedent-setting power.
The IPO Connection
The Guardian’s analysis lays out the financial context: Anthropic has already begun registering to list on US sharemarkets, following SpaceX’s path. SpaceX raised $86 billion and soared to a $2.1 trillion valuation after listing in June. Both OpenAI and Anthropic want the same trajectory.
But the story got harder last week. China’s Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open model that analysts judge competitive with leading US models. Implied values for Anthropic’s IPO dropped $232 billion to $1.56 trillion on IG’s trading platform between Friday and Tuesday. OpenAI dropped $160 billion to $1.16 trillion.
Neither company is publicly valued at $1 trillion yet — these are market bets, not real valuations. But the direction matters. Chinese competition does not make for a good IPO story.
What Australia’s Rules Actually Do
Australia’s assistant technology minister Andrew Charlton says the new regulation means Australian creatives can choose whether AI models are trained on their work, and big tech companies will have to pay them. This matters especially for Anthropic, which just settled a copyright lawsuit for $1.5 billion — paying authors roughly $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books.
One of the authors whose work Anthropic scraped was Charlton himself.
Yet Charlton frames the rules as a win for big tech, telling Sky News: “If we are upfront with what we expect in this Australian standard, we can give clarity to investors that in some ways enhances the attractiveness of Australia.”
Malik Ahmed Khan, an equity analyst at Morningstar, agrees: technology companies would find it much easier to invest in Australia as they learn where regulation is heading. Regulatory clarity reduces investment risk — and reduced risk means higher valuations.
Why Big AI Loves Rules It Should Hate
The counterintuitive part is that regulation, which theoretically constrains AI companies, actually serves their strategic interests in three ways:
1. Barrier to entry. Compliance costs money. A small AI startup cannot afford the legal infrastructure to navigate mandatory licensing, copyright payments, and safety audits. OpenAI and Anthropic can. Every new regulation is a moat against future Moonshots — or at least against the non-Chinese ones.
2. IPO narrative. Institutional investors are wary of unregulated frontier tech. A company operating under clear regulatory frameworks looks more like a mature business and less like a gamble. “We comply with Australian standards” is a sentence that belongs in a prospectus.
3. Precedent setting. Australia is a small market, but regulations here become templates. The EU AI Act already influences global compliance. If Australia’s model — which includes creator opt-out and payment obligations — gets adopted elsewhere, OpenAI and Anthropic have already built the compliance infrastructure. New entrants haven’t.
The SpaceX Playbook
The reference to SpaceX is deliberate. SpaceX’s $2.1 trillion listing worked because the company could tell a story about mature revenue, government contracts, and a regulatory framework (FAA launch licensing, defence procurement) that made it look like an established aerospace player rather than a speculative venture.
OpenAI and Anthropic want the same framing. The IPO race between them is not just about who lists first — it’s about who can tell the better story to institutional investors. “We support sensible regulation” is a better story than “we’re in an unregulated free-for-all against a Chinese competitor that gives its model away.”
What This Means for NZ
New Zealand has no AI-specific regulation. The previous government’s AI strategy discussion paper went nowhere, and the current government has been silent. Australia’s framework — whatever its final form — will function as the de facto standard for Trans-Tasman tech companies, because no NZ firm will build a separate compliance regime for a market of 5 million when Australia’s 27 million is right there.
This is the same pattern we saw with the Australian AI regulation retreat — NZ effectively imports whatever Australia decides. If Australia’s rules include creator payment obligations, NZ publishers and authors will likely demand the same. If Australia’s rules raise compliance costs for AI deployers, NZ businesses using AI tools will feel it through pricing.
The question for NZ policymakers is whether to follow Australia’s lead proactively — shaping the rules to fit NZ’s smaller market — or to wait and inherit whatever trans-Tasman harmonisation delivers.
❓ FAQ
Does this mean OpenAI and Anthropic actually want to be regulated? They want clear regulation, which is different from wanting strict regulation. Clear rules that they can comply with — and that smaller competitors struggle to afford — are good for incumbents. Vague or patchwork regulation is what they actually fear, because it creates uncertainty without raising barriers.
How much did Anthropic’s copyright settlement cost? $1.5 billion, paying roughly $3,000 per book for an estimated 500,000 books. This is the largest AI copyright settlement to date and a direct preview of what compliance with creator-payment rules will cost at scale.
Will Australia’s rules affect NZ? Indirectly but significantly. Trans-Tasman regulatory harmonisation means most NZ tech companies will effectively operate under Australia’s framework. NZ publishers and creators will likely push for equivalent protections regardless of what Wellington decides.
Is this related to the Kimi K3 launch? Yes. The timing is not coincidental. Both OpenAI and Anthropic lost billions in implied valuation after Kimi K3 launched. Supporting regulation is partly a narrative play — “we’re the responsible AI companies” — to counter the story that Chinese open-source is catching up.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
OpenAI and Anthropic cheering for Australian AI regulation is the clearest example yet of regulatory capture dressed as corporate responsibility. The rules give them what they want: higher barriers for competitors, a stronger IPO story, and precedent-setting power in a small market with global influence. Whether that serves the public interest — or just the interests of two companies racing to trillion-dollar listings — is the question Australia’s parliament will need to answer.
