Original article excerpt
Server-side extracted preview paragraphs from the original source.
Startups are trying to "ride that SpaceX IPO wave."
SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
Despite its name, SpaceX has been emphasizing the potential of its costly AI business, and competitors OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts. So on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what’s looking like a hot IPO summer.
“We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person,” Sean said. “My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.”
Kirsten also noted that there are other startups trying to “ride that SpaceX IPO wave,” for example by raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX helped to popularize the concept.
“So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, ‘SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire,’” she said.
Anthony Ha: I want to zoom out a little bit from just the SpaceX IPO, because beyond the Elon Musk of it all, it’s the beginning of what could be a [series] of different IPOs for different AI companies. We’ve talked about Anthropic confidentially filing to go public, and now OpenAI has done the same. How excited are either of you about this?