SpaceX has already fired the starting gun. The rocket company made its Nasdaq debut on June 12, opening at $150 per share and surging 19% on its first day of trading. According to CNBC, SpaceX's IPO raised $75 billion on June 11, and after underwriters exercised their overallotment option, the total climbed to $85.7 billion — a staggering sum by any historical measure.
Now, attention is turning to who comes next. According to Moomoo, OpenAI and Anthropic — the two most prominent AI labs in the world — are among the names lined up for what analysts are framing as potentially the largest IPO wave in history. The three companies together represent an extraordinary concentration of investor interest across the aerospace and artificial intelligence sectors.
The anticipation is already bleeding into crypto markets. Kraken announced the launch of pre-IPO perpetual contracts for both Anthropic and OpenAI, allowing traders to take positions on the AI companies' valuations at up to 5x leverage — even before either firm has set a public listing date.
The question of who ultimately foots the bill, as Moomoo frames it, is real: IPOs at this scale require massive institutional appetite, and the pipeline of mega-deals could test how much capital markets can absorb in a short window.
Why it matters: if OpenAI and Anthropic follow SpaceX to public markets, the resulting listings would represent a defining moment for both the AI industry and the broader stock market — putting a public price tag on technologies that are reshaping entire economies.