SpaceX's Record IPO Sparks OpenAI, Anthropic Race
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- SpaceX completed the largest IPO ever this week, making CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, and is using the debut to emphasize its costly AI business despite the company's name.
- OpenAI and Anthropic have both confidentially filed to go public, creating a race for finite capital — with OpenAI reportedly already slashing prices as it competes on the IPO calendar.
- The dominant tech cohort has shifted from FAANG (Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) to what host Kirsten Korosec dubbed 'MANGOS' (Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX), with Netflix dropped and AI labs elevated.
- Quantum Space is pursuing a SPAC to ride the SpaceX IPO wave, while other startups are raising money for orbital data centers capitalizing on a concept SpaceX helped popularize.
- Ford and General Motors are pivoting unused battery capacity to become energy providers for data centers, with Ford's stock rising on what O'Kane described as a 'pretty modest-looking' energy storage business.
- Korosec cautioned that automakers trying to model their businesses after Tesla or SpaceX 'doesn't always work,' pointing to years of failed 'next Tesla killer' pursuits.
Why it matters: SpaceX's IPO is redistributing public-market capital from consumer social stalwarts — Netflix just got dropped from the dominant cohort — toward AI labs and deeptech, with OpenAI and Anthropic racing to tap finite investor demand before valuations 'come back down to Earth.' The deeper test is whether those AI labs will emulate SpaceX's extreme single-founder control and Amazon-style 'lose money forever' approach once they hit public markets.
