On Friday, shares in Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq, in what could be the largest initial public offering in history, with the company raising $75bn and targeting a valuation of $1.75tn. Just a week earlier, AI firm Anthropic—maker of the chatbot Claude—filed plans to go public, and on Monday OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, revealed it had made a confidential filing with US regulators to pursue an IPO of its own. The three announcements mark a dramatic acceleration in the race among some of the world's most valuable private companies to sell shares to the public.
An initial public offering, or IPO, is the first time a company sells its stock to ordinary investors on a public stock exchange. It allows the firm to raise huge sums of cash, and lets anyone buy a piece of the business. For decades, going public was the natural end point for a successful startup, but in recent years many tech giants—including SpaceX and OpenAI—stayed private for longer, funded by venture capital and sovereign wealth funds. Now, a confluence of factors is pushing them back towards the stock market.
“The wave of tech IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic explained.”
The primary driver is an enormous need for cash. All three companies are making massive investments in expensive infrastructure: SpaceX builds rockets and satellites; OpenAI and Anthropic spend billions on the computer chips and data centres needed to train and run their AI models. As Sunil Krishnan from Aviva Investors told the BBC, these firms have a "vast need for cash" and "no-one wants to be last" in the race to raise money. By going public, they can tap the deepest pool of capital in the world—the public markets—and use the proceeds to outspend competitors.
For UK readers, this wave of IPOs matters for several reasons. First, it signals that the era of cheap private money for tech giants may be ending, as investors demand more transparency and a chance to own a slice of the action. UK pension funds and retail investors who buy shares in these companies will be directly exposed to the risks and rewards of building AI and space technology. Second, the success or failure of these listings will shape the broader market for tech stocks, affecting the valuation of UK-listed tech firms and the appetite for future IPOs in London. Third, the companies themselves have global ambitions: SpaceX's Starlink internet service already covers parts of the UK, and OpenAI's ChatGPT is used by millions of Britons—their financial health has real-world consequences.
Q: What is an IPO? An IPO, or initial public offering, is when a private company sells its shares to the public for the first time. It allows the company to raise money from investors and gives ordinary people the chance to buy and trade its stock on an exchange like the Nasdaq or London Stock Exchange.
Q: Why are SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all going public now? All three companies need enormous amounts of cash to fund their ambitions—SpaceX to build rockets and satellites, and the AI firms to buy chips and train ever-larger models. Going public lets them raise billions quickly, and there is a sense of urgency because none of them want to be the last to tap the market, according to analysts.
Q: What does this mean for Elon Musk? Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX and also has a stake in OpenAI (though he is not involved in its management). With SpaceX targeting a $1.75tn valuation, his personal fortune could grow so large that he becomes the world's first trillionaire, the BBC reports. The IPO also gives Musk a new source of capital for his other ventures, including Tesla and X.
What happens next is uncertain for OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither has set a firm date for its IPO—OpenAI said "it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company." But the filings are public, and both firms are now competing to see who lists first. SpaceX, meanwhile, will begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, and investors will be watching closely to see whether the stock rises or falls on its first day—a verdict on whether the hype matches reality.