AI Companies Rush to Go Public: SpaceX IPO and Market Shifts
SpaceX's record-breaking IPO, making Elon Musk the first trillionaire, kicks off a wave of AI company public debuts, reshaping the public market landscape.
SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. Despite its space reputation, the company has been emphasizing its costly AI business. Competitors OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts.
On TechCrunch's Equity podcast, journalists Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane, and Anthony Ha discussed what looks like a hot IPO summer. Sean noted that SpaceX is not only sucking up a huge chunk of available capital but also stress-testing the limits of how much a single person can control a public company. He said he's watching how other tech companies will try to emulate SpaceX.
Kirsten highlighted a "ripple effect," with other startups trying to ride the SpaceX IPO wave, such as raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX popularized the concept. She found this more interesting than the headline of Musk becoming a trillionaire.
The conversation also covered the shift from FAANG (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) to a new acronym MANGOS: Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX. Netflix is out, replaced by AI labs and deep-tech companies.
Kirsten noted a race between Anthropic and OpenAI to go public first, as capital and interest are finite. However, she cautioned that short-term thinking should not overshadow long-term strategy.
Sean added that AI is already remaking the economy, citing Ford and General Motors pivoting unused battery capacity to energy storage for data centers. Ford's stock rose after the announcement. Kirsten warned automakers against blindly copying Elon Musk's business strategies, as they have failed before.
