SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs set to test limits of AI boom

Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei once sparred over how OpenAI could catch Google in AI.

Now, the trio are preparing blockbuster flotations that could mint trillion-dollar companies, revive moribund markets for US initial public offerings and test the ability of public investors to absorb a tidal wave of tech listings.

The rivalry — sharpened by Musk and Amodei’s acrimonious departures from OpenAI in 2018 and 2020 — has also set up a contest over which company can command the deepest pool of capital.

Amodei’s Anthropic, Musk’s SpaceX and Altman’s OpenAI could make 2026 the biggest year for US IPOs. Share sales from all three companies would push such fundraising well beyond the record $156bn raised in 2021, ending four lean years for venture investors and Wall Street bankers.

Investors, bankers and advisers involved in the offerings said executives were weighing how much capital they could raise across the three deals without overstretching the market.

Weak debuts could also undermine the AI optimism that has helped propel US equities higher despite inflation and geopolitical turmoil.

All three private companies moved closer to listing this week, as leaks about OpenAI’s accelerated IPO timetable and Anthropic’s first quarterly profit competed for attention with SpaceX’s long-awaited S-1 filing.

The leaks signal to public market investors that the AI labs could follow SpaceX in short order.

Rob Hilmer, founder of Goanna Capital, which has a position in all three companies, said it was no coincidence they were all preparing to list at the same time.

“In a strong risk-on environment, which we’ve been in for a while, how many large-scale tech IPOs would we expect after five years of not many?”

“In a world looking for growth, there is a lack of those assets in public markets today . . . I think they’ll be extremely well received,” he added.

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Backers believe the companies can ride a wave of AI enthusiasm among institutional and retail investors alike. SpaceX is aiming to raise about $75bn at a $1.75tn valuation, while OpenAI was recently valued at $852bn and Anthropic is close to sealing a $30bn funding round at a $900bn price tag.

“There is almost $8tn in money market funds today,” said another investor in all three companies. “Absorbing SpaceX’s [expected $75bn] float is just 1 per cent of that. There’s cash on the sidelines ready to put to work.”

Public investors have spent years “trying to get exposure to AI in derivative ways, particularly via semis [semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia]. As soon as they can get access to the labs they will own directly. It won’t be them that has a challenge, it will permeate to the rest of the market,” they added.

Peter Hébert, co-founder of venture capital firm Lux Capital, was also confident public markets could absorb the massive floats. “A $75bn mega raise by SpaceX would not even be the largest primary capital raise announced since the start of 2026, that record is held by OpenAI,” he said, referring to the ChatGPT maker’s $122bn funding round earlier this year.

But the trio remain heavily lossmaking and public investors may prove less tolerant of vast cash burn and unfunded commitments than private backers have been.

At the $1.75tn valuation bankers are targeting, SpaceX would trade at 91 times its $19bn of revenues over the past year, a multiple that eclipses the priciest of its Big Tech peers. Nvidia, the most expensive of the Magnificent 7 stocks on a revenue basis, trades at 21 times trailing sales and is massively profitable.

To pull off the SpaceX flotation, Musk needs investors to buy into his vision as well as the numbers. The prospectus reads as much like a manifesto as a financial disclosure: 14 of its first 16 pages are dominated by images of rockets, satellites and planets.

SpaceX is also welcoming investors to visit its Starbase headquarters in Texas to sell the story, according to people familiar with the matter.

“If you don’t see it, you can’t feel it, and if you can’t feel it, you don’t quite understand,” said Justin Fishner-Wolfson of 137 Ventures, whose firm first invested in SpaceX in 2011.

“What you see is one of the largest buildings in the world manufacturing rockets, at what potentially could be the scale of airplanes and two launch pads and the towers that go with them,” he said.

He noted the fully reusable rockets SpaceX was building would enable the whole business, from satellite-beamed internet and cell service on Earth to data centres in space.

Anthropic’s profitability may prove fleeting as spending increases. The group this month signed on to become SpaceX’s biggest customer, agreeing to spend $15bn a year on data centre capacity and computing power after also making commitments worth hundreds of billions more in deals with Google and Amazon.

OpenAI’s outlay is more ambitious. The company booked almost $6bn in revenue last quarter, driven by ChatGPT and growing use of its coding tool Codex, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

But it has told investors it expects to burn through about $600bn before turning profitable in 2030. It has raised more than any start-up in history, churning through Big Tech and sovereign backers, and is looking to public investors to extend its runway.

Part of OpenAI’s pitch is that it will be first to achieve artificial general intelligence — the vaguely defined point at which AI surpasses human capability — and that the rewards will dwarf today’s spending.

Grand visions that play well in private markets do not always survive contact with public ones.

WeWork’s mission to ‘elevate the world’s consciousness’ by renting offices with ping-pong tables and beer taps was lapped up by private investors including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, but given short shrift by public funds, leading the company to pull its $47bn listing in 2019.

That episode haunts some private investors.

But others are more sanguine: comparison between the doomed office company and today’s AI darlings “conflates a big company that was a terrible business with three of the best-quality companies ever. These are well run, high-growth businesses,” said Goanna’s Hilmer.

“The last thing I’m concerned with is whether there is capital to invest in them.”