SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO in history, making CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. But the story extends far beyond one man’s fortune. As TechCrunch’s Equity podcast discussed, the SpaceX listing is the opening act in what could be a defining summer for public markets, with AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic both filing confidentially to follow suit.
The shift marks a significant reorientation of investor attention. Julie Bort of TechCrunch has dubbed the new market leaders “MANGOS” — Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX — replacing the old FAANG grouping (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google). “We’ve got a bunch of AI labs in there, and that’s very different,” said Equity co-host Kirsten Korosec. “Netflix gets booted out.”
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The IPO Race and Its Ripple Effects
The timing of these offerings is not coincidental. Analysts suggest that OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to go public before the other, given finite investor capital and the risk that valuations may cool. “There’s very much a race between Anthropic and OpenAI,” Korosec noted, pointing to OpenAI’s recent price cuts as evidence of competitive pressure.
But the implications extend beyond the three companies. Sean O’Kane, another Equity host, observed that SpaceX is “stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person.” He added that SpaceX appears to be combining the most extreme aspects of Google and Meta’s early IPOs with Amazon’s long-term profit tolerance, and that Anthropic and OpenAI may try to emulate that model.
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Riding the Wave: Startups and Legacy Automakers
The IPO wave is already creating a ripple effect across the startup ecosystem. Companies like Quantum Space are pursuing SPAC mergers, hoping to capitalize on investor enthusiasm for space-related ventures. Others are raising money for orbital data centers, a concept popularized by SpaceX. “There’s a ripple effect happening throughout the market that is probably even more interesting than just the headline, ‘SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire,'” Korosec said.
Even legacy automakers are pivoting. Ford and General Motors are repurposing unused battery manufacturing capacity to become energy providers for AI data centers. Ford’s stock rose after announcing a modest energy storage business. “The economy’s already being remade,” O’Kane said. “Whether that’s durable, that’s the question, but it’s happening right now.”
Korosec cautioned that automakers may be repeating past mistakes by chasing Elon Musk’s playbook. “I wish I could communicate this to all the automaker CEOs out there,” she said. “Trying to model your business after Tesla or SpaceX — it doesn’t always work.”
