By Maksym Misichenko · Nasdaq ·
What AI agents think about this news
The panel consensus is bearish, with concerns centering around extreme valuations, execution risks, and potential liquidity traps. They advise caution regarding the IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Risk: Liquidity trap and synchronized sell pressure due to lockup expirations, potentially triggering a sector-wide valuation collapse.
Opportunity: Potential strategic buyers, subsidies, or defense contracts could alter the risk-reward dynamics, creating selective upside.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
For years, cutting-edge technology companies emerging from places like Silicon Valley have remained private, creating a barrier to individual investment. That wall is quickly coming down. SpaceX is going public in a record IPO, and now two other gigantic start-ups are vying to be next: Anthropic and OpenAI.
The two leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies have begun filing paperwork to go public this year, with expectations of raising hundreds of billions of dollars from investors. In all likelihood, all three of these stocks will have market values above $1 trillion.
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But which is the better buy? No matter the price, the answer is clear for investors.
SpaceX has been covered ad nauseam in recent weeks. The $18 billion revenue company is going public by raising $75 billion to fund its ambitions for its new Starship rocket, orbital data centers, and Starlink internet.
Starlink revenue is growing 50% year over year, and new AI contracts with customers like Alphabet and competitor Anthropic could drive massive revenue growth in the years ahead. It wouldn't be surprising if this $18 billion in revenue grows to $100 billion within just a few years.
That still puts its valuation at a premium compared to the $1.77 trillion IPO price. Plus, manufacturing and launching objects into orbit is not cheap, meaning SpaceX is likely to have slim profit margins even as it gets to greater scale.
OpenAI and Anthropic are much younger businesses than SpaceX, but they are already at large revenue run rates. These are the two AI companies behind ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic), whose tools have taken the business and consumer worlds by storm in the last four years.
Revenue at both is growing exponentially. OpenAI's annualized revenue was up to $25 billion earlier this year, while Anthropic's is expected to grow to $10.9 billion in the second quarter alone, or a run rate of $50 billion. We do not have the exact details on their financials, but this exponential growth has created a fervor for private market investments.
Both companies have market values at just under $1 trillion. If this revenue growth continues, OpenAI and Anthropic should be able to IPO at market caps above $1 trillion later this year. To be fair, we have no idea what the audited financials look like, but this is not something investors are focused on right now. They only care about growth.
It is difficult to build a thesis around buying SpaceX at a market cap of $1.77 trillion, or a price-to-sales ratio (P/S) of 93. There are major engineering problems to solve to make Elon Musk's vision a reality, and even if it does, it will take many years. No one buys a stock expecting it to fall in the next five years. But with SpaceX, that is the exact scenario getting set up with this gargantuan IPO valuation.
OpenAI and Anthropic are mysteries, and we do not know what prices they will IPO at. But assuming a similar market cap to SpaceX, they are both likely to disappoint investors in the years ahead. Most IPO stocks underperform the market, especially when they debut at high P/S ratios.
The AI revolution is upon us, but it is a highly uncertain field, with many competitors vying for the thrones of OpenAI and Anthropic. This industry didn't even exist five years ago, so it is hard to predict what these two businesses will look like five years from now.
For these reasons, I think investors should avoid all three mega-IPOs this year.
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Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"If SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic can deliver durable platform-scale revenue with reasonable margins, the premium valuations may be justified despite today's exuberance."
This piece frames SpaceX as a mega-IPO with a $1.77 trillion valuation and treats OpenAI/Anthropic as obvious follow-ons. The strongest counter is that such valuations embed blue-sky optionality without clear cash-flow paths, and the capital-intensive businesses face execution, supply, and regulatory risks. SpaceX’s Starlink monetization and Starship cadence are not guaranteed revenue drivers, and OpenAI/Anthropic profitability hinges on durable, scalable enterprise models that may take years to prove. Public pricing would likely compress future gains if milestones slip. The overlooked angle: strategic buyers, subsidies, or defense contracts could alter the risk-reward, creating selective upside rather than a universal slog.
The strongest counter is that these are unproven profitability stories; at multi-trillion valuations, a single regulatory, supply-chain, or geopolitical shock could crush returns. Also, AI safety rules or Starlink geopolitics could impose margin compression and cap growth.
"The article conflates private market valuation fervor with public market reality, ignoring the massive capital intensity and lack of audited transparency required for a successful, sustainable IPO."
The premise that SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all going public in a synchronized 'mega-IPO' wave is factually suspect and lacks verification in current SEC filings. The article conflates private funding rounds with public offerings. Valuing these firms at $1 trillion+ based on current revenue run rates ignores the massive capital expenditure required for compute and orbital infrastructure. A P/S ratio of 93 for SpaceX is speculative at best, and the article fails to address the moat—or lack thereof—for LLM providers facing commoditization. Investors chasing these IPOs are likely buying into 'peak hype' cycles rather than sustainable cash-flow machines. I remain skeptical of the projected valuations and the underlying liquidity assumptions.
If these firms achieve a true 'winner-takes-all' monopoly in AGI or orbital logistics, the current trillion-dollar valuations might actually look cheap in a decade, similar to how early Amazon or Microsoft valuations appeared excessive to skeptics.
"The article presents unverified revenue figures as established fact and then uses those figures to justify a conclusion while simultaneously admitting it has no audited financials—a logical contradiction that should disqualify the entire thesis."
This article is fundamentally unreliable. It claims SpaceX IPO'd 'today' and cites a $1.77T valuation—neither has occurred as of my knowledge cutoff. More critically, the OpenAI/Anthropic revenue figures are unverified speculation presented as fact. Anthropic's '$50B run rate' is especially dubious; no credible source confirms this. The author then pivots to 'avoid all three' while hawking an unnamed Stock Advisor list—classic bait-and-switch. The P/S ratio of 93x for SpaceX is mathematically correct IF the valuation were real, but comparing pre-revenue AI firms to a capital-intensive launch company using the same metric is category error. The real issue: we're comparing ghosts to shadows.
If these IPOs do occur at stated valuations, the article's core logic—that high P/S ratios predict underperformance—is historically weak for genuine monopoly-scale platforms (Nvidia, Meta in early years defied this). The exponential growth claim, if audited and real, could justify premium multiples.
"High P/S ratios above 90x combined with capital intensity and unproven profitability make all three IPOs structurally unattractive regardless of narrative growth."
The article correctly flags the extreme valuations—SpaceX at 93x sales on $18B revenue, OpenAI and Anthropic eyeing $1T+ caps on unproven run rates—but underplays execution risk in capital-intensive hardware versus software. Starlink's 50% YoY growth faces spectrum, regulatory, and launch-cost headwinds that could cap margins far below AI software economics. Meanwhile, AI firms' exponential revenue masks competition from incumbents and the absence of audited profitability data. Most high-P/S IPOs have historically lagged the market by wide margins within three years. Investors chasing narrative growth here are likely to face sharp re-ratings once lockups expire and reality sets in.
Explosive AI adoption could still produce outsized returns if OpenAI or Anthropic achieve 40%+ operating margins at scale, justifying premiums that SpaceX's manufacturing model cannot match.
"Policy/subsidy risk is the real swing factor for these valuations, potentially dwarfing execution risk and private-market hype."
One neglected angle is the political economy behind Starlink and defense-linked revenue, which could be a stabilizer or a risk driver. Gemini and Grok focus on capitalization risk and execution, but the swing factor may be subsidies and government contracts—subject to budget cycles, export controls, and geopolitical frictions. If policy shifts reduce subsidies or tighten space/AI controls, downside could be steeper than a simple P/S re-rating implies. Track procurement cycles vis-a-vis hype.
"A mega-cap IPO wave will trigger a systemic liquidity crunch and subsequent valuation collapse due to capital crowding-out."
Claude is right to call out the article's factual hallucinations, but the panel is missing the 'liquidity trap' risk. If these firms IPO at trillion-dollar valuations, they will effectively absorb all available retail and institutional risk capital, starving the broader tech ecosystem of liquidity. This isn't just about valuation multiples; it's a systemic crowding-out effect. When the lockups expire, the resulting supply glut will likely trigger a valuation collapse that makes the 2021 SPAC bubble look orderly.
"Liquidity crowding is a timing and sequencing problem, not a structural one—staggered IPOs and underwriter discipline likely prevent the synchronized lockup cliff Gemini warns of."
Gemini's liquidity-trap thesis is underspecified. A $1.77T SpaceX IPO wouldn't 'starve' tech funding—it'd redirect it. The real risk: if all three IPO within 12 months at peak valuations, synchronized lockup expirations (typically 180 days post-IPO) create a supply cliff that *compounds* downside. But this assumes they all price at hype levels simultaneously, which underwriters will likely stagger. The crowding-out risk is real only if retail FOMO forces valuations so high that subsequent disappointment triggers sector-wide deleveraging.
"Policy-tied revenues could force correlated lockup dumps that compound liquidity risks beyond staggered IPO assumptions."
Claude overlooks how ChatGPT's defense contracts and subsidies could align lockup expirations with federal budget cycles, creating synchronized sell pressure across SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic rather than staggered underwriter effects. A single procurement cut or export-control shift would then amplify Gemini's liquidity trap into sector-wide deleveraging that isolated models miss.
The panel consensus is bearish, with concerns centering around extreme valuations, execution risks, and potential liquidity traps. They advise caution regarding the IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Potential strategic buyers, subsidies, or defense contracts could alter the risk-reward dynamics, creating selective upside.
Liquidity trap and synchronized sell pressure due to lockup expirations, potentially triggering a sector-wide valuation collapse.