The largest IPO in history has concluded, with AI unicorns closely examining its report card to plot their own public listing strategies.
On June 12th, SpaceX completed its trading debut on the Nasdaq. Wall Street witnessed the biggest IPO ever: an opening price of $150, a session high of $176, and a closing market capitalization settling at $2.1 trillion.
Beyond the numbers, the "how" of this listing is even more noteworthy, as back in San Francisco, OpenAI and Anthropic are still in line for their own IPOs.
Keys to a Seamless Process
The SpaceX listing process encountered almost no disruptions.
The key factor was timing. According to a recent Axios report, SpaceX and its lead underwriter Goldman Sachs began engaging with potential investors as early as January this year—a full six months ahead of the official listing.
An insider revealed: "Given the breadth and complexity of the company's business, educating investors very early on was paramount. And the company has been announcing major developments almost weekly—such as acquiring xAI and Cursor, or securing computing power partnerships with Anthropic and Google—so the communication has been continuous."
This "warm-up" period yielded two direct results: first, during the listing week, SpaceX did not need to meet any new investors for the first time, making the roadshow exceptionally smooth; second, early valuation feedback gave SpaceX the confidence to set a fixed "take-it-or-leave-it" price of $135 per share, rather than opting for the traditional book-building auction model.
CNBC host Jim Cramer specifically commented on the performance of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley: "The stock opened at a reasonable price relative to the IPO price, not so high as to trigger arbitrage selling, nor so low as to cause panic. That's remarkable."
OpenAI and Anthropic: A Double-Edged Sword
SpaceX's success is good news for OpenAI and Anthropic, but it also harbors a subtle risk.
The good news is that the market is willing to pay for companies that are "burning cash but have a future."
The New York Times noted that SpaceX's strong first-day performance indicates that profitability is once again taking a backseat to growth potential and industry positioning. This is a positive signal for OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also incurring massive losses.
OpenAI generated approximately $13 billion in revenue last year but plans to spend around $100 billion over the next four years; Anthropic has also been operating at a loss long-term, and while it is expected to achieve adjusted operating profit in the June quarter, it may still post a loss for the full year.
The bad news is that capital is finite.
When large, similar companies list in quick succession, the market's appetite may become saturated. Reports explicitly raise this concern: investor enthusiasm for the second or third major IPO may not match that for the first.
A worse scenario would be if SpaceX's stock price were to decline significantly post-listing, causing investors to hesitate in betting on OpenAI or Anthropic.
If all three companies successfully list, their combined valuation would exceed $3.6 trillion, simultaneously claiming the top three spots for the largest IPOs in history.
OpenAI Faces Greater Pressure
In this IPO race, OpenAI finds itself in a relatively passive position.
Anthropic filed its application a week earlier than OpenAI, with its latest private valuation at $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion for the first time. According to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI executives have privately expressed concern about Anthropic getting to market first. Furthermore, OpenAI has recently been overtaken by Anthropic in the enterprise customer market, and some internal revenue targets have been missed.
OpenAI's financing needs are immense: it has already secured the largest single round of funding in Silicon Valley history from investors including Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, raising over $180 billion cumulatively. However, based on projections disclosed to investors, its cash burn rate is set to outpace that of any public company in history.
To clarify for the market "where the money is being burned," CEO Sam Altman published a blog post on the day of the filing, positioning the company in the "third stage":
"The economy is being reshaped around AI. The central question is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and usable enough for every person and organization to benefit."
Simultaneously, OpenAI is narrowing its focus internally—shutting down peripheral projects like the short-video app Sora to concentrate resources on its enterprise business and the programming assistant Codex, which directly competes with Anthropic's Claude Code.
Altman wrote on X in April: "Feels like Codex is having a ChatGPT moment."
A Blueprint for Replication
An Axios report suggests that SpaceX's model of "educating investors six months in advance + fixed-price offering" is highly likely to be directly replicated by Anthropic and OpenAI.
The reason is simple: it worked too smoothly.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley jointly served as lead underwriters for SpaceX's IPO, and these banks are highly likely to also lead the listing processes for OpenAI and Anthropic.
According to Axios, OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advance its public listing, potentially reaching the public market as soon as this autumn.
Furthermore, it's not just AI companies following this trend. South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix has also chosen the Nasdaq, planning a U.S. listing as early as August this year, with a fundraising target of up to $14 billion.
As reported by Reuters, Mirae Asset Securities analyst Kim Sunwoo explained the underlying logic:
"Passive investment funds now account for a larger share of global investment flows than active funds, with a significant portion concentrated in Nasdaq-listed stocks. This makes the Nasdaq particularly attractive for tech companies seeking to broaden their investor base."
SK Hynix's stock price has risen approximately 220% year-to-date, with its market capitalization surpassing $1 trillion in May.
The Prevailing Market Sentiment
Cramer directly articulated the current market sentiment on his CNBC program:
"This is a long-term bet on space exploration."
He said that those buying SpaceX are not buying it for its current earnings:
"I think they have considered the risks and recognized that there could be losses for the foreseeable future."
His conclusion was: if the stock price falls, it should be seen as a buying opportunity, as "the upside is unimaginably large."
This logic is identical to that of those who bought Amazon a decade ago. Amazon posted losses for six consecutive years after its IPO and for many years thereafter reinvested most of its profits into new businesses, ultimately becoming one of the world's most valuable companies.
Now, the same question faces OpenAI and Anthropic: are investors willing to wait once more?
SpaceX's first-day data provides a tentative answer.
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