Three of the most closely watched private companies in tech are converging on the stock market at the same time. OpenAI has confidentially filed for an IPO, according to Wired, joining SpaceX and Anthropic in what is shaping up to be the most consequential public-market wave in years.
SpaceX is already out of the gate. According to Reuters, the company began trading on Nasdaq on Friday after investors poured $75 billion into what Reuters described as the world's biggest IPO ever. The debut is being watched as a test of what Reuters calls the "Musk premium" — the force analysts credit for pushing Tesla past a $1 trillion valuation — and as an early read on investor appetite for the AI IPOs expected to follow.
For everyday investors hoping to ride the wave, Wired offers a reality check: SpaceX set aside an unusually high number of shares for retail buyers, but experts say those investors are "just getting the crumbs."
The mood isn't uniformly celebratory. Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg both ran pieces flagging unease about the cluster of mega-IPOs arriving together, with one Bloomberg headline describing the SpaceX-Anthropic-OpenAI combination as "a cocktail with a hangover." BNN Bloomberg similarly warned that while the listings will be splashy, volatility is likely to follow.
What makes this moment significant is the scale and timing: the simultaneous push by OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic to access public capital will set market prices — and public narratives — around AI and space technology for years to come, even as analysts urge caution about what comes after the opening bell.