SpaceX IPO Reshapes Market for Anthropic, OpenAI Shares
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- Anthropic shares are the "hardest stock to source" at Rainmaker Securities, with buyers indicating $2 billion in cash ready to deploy; Anderson credits the company's public standoff with the Department of Defense for amplifying its appeal and making it "more differentiated from OpenAI."
- OpenAI shares on the secondary market are trading at roughly a $765 billion valuation, an appreciable discount to its newest $852 billion primary-round valuation; the company has warned investors to be "extremely cautious" of firms purporting to offer its equity outside authorized bank channels.
- SpaceX filed confidentially this week for an IPO that Elon Musk reportedly aims to price between $50 billion and $75 billion, possibly in June — a debut that would approach the scale of Saudi Aramco's 2019 $1.7 trillion listing, the only one to come close.
- SpaceX is one of the only names in Rainmaker's universe that never experienced the 60-70% correction that hit much of the private market between 2022 and 2024, with an investor from the 2015 ~$12 billion Google-Fidelity round now sitting on more than 100x gains as the company is valued above $1 trillion.
- SpaceX's IPO filing has triggered a flood of buyers seeking shares in the secondary market, but supply is drying up as existing shareholders wait for the imminent liquidity event, per Anderson.
- Anderson warns SpaceX will "soak up a lot of liquidity" in the IPO market, putting OpenAI and Anthropic — both reportedly exploring their own public offerings this year — at a disadvantage as second movers competing for the same pool of capital.
Why it matters: SpaceX's IPO will "soak up a lot of liquidity," per Anderson, putting pressure on OpenAI and Anthropic — both reportedly exploring 2025 public debuts — to compete with the rocket company for limited IPO capital. Early SpaceX backers from the 2015 ~$12 billion round now sit on more than 100x gains, while OpenAI's secondary mark has slipped to a discount below its $852 billion primary valuation.
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