- SpaceX is set to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12 at US$135 per share.
- Anthropic and OpenAI have both moved toward public listings, setting up a broader test of investor appetite for AI-era mega-IPOs.
- For Stockhouse investors, the read-through may be less about the IPO day trade and more about the infrastructure behind AI, satellites, data centres, power and advanced manufacturing.
SpaceX leads the next wave of mega-cap IPOs
SpaceX’s expected Nasdaq debut is more than a landmark listing for Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company. It could also become the opening test for a new generation of public offerings built around artificial intelligence, global infrastructure and private-market valuations that already stretch into the hundreds of billions (trillions in the case of SpaceX).
SpaceX is set to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12, with its IPO priced at US$135 per share — read more about it here. The listing places the company at the centre of one of the most closely watched market debuts in recent memory.
But SpaceX isn’t drifting out there in isolation.
Anthropic, who brought us Claude, confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1. Days later, ChatGPT parent company OpenAI also confidentially filed for a US initial public offering, according to Reuters. CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff he expects the company to go public “within the next year.”
Together, the three companies are giving investors a first real look at how private AI-era valuations may translate into public markets. Until now, most investors have played the artificial intelligence theme through public-market proxies such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and other companies supplying chips, cloud capacity and infrastructure.
But all the excitement centers around SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI moving public investors closer to the source of the next-generation technology stack.
Why SpaceX is more than a space stock
SpaceX is the broadest and most physical of the three stories. The company spans rocket launches, reusable launch systems, Starlink satellite broadband, defence-adjacent infrastructure, global connectivity, and large-scale compute ambitions.
That makes SpaceX difficult to compare with a traditional aerospace company. Its part space operator, part telecommunications network, part defense technology supplier, and part infrastructure platform.
That mix is central to the bull case. Starlink gives SpaceX recurring revenue from satellite internet subscribers, while the launch business gives it a strategic position in commercial space, national security and orbital infrastructure. Supporters argue that this combination gives SpaceX a platform few public companies can match.
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The bear case is valuation, supply and execution risk. To put it bluntly, the SpaceX IPO may not necessarily disrupt the Magnificent Seven trade, but the market still has to absorb a large new supply of shares at an extremely demanding valuation.
JonesTrading chief market strategist Michael O’Rourke described the implied valuation as “absurd” stating “100 times revenues is pretty dangerous. That’s the reason Elon wanted the index passive bid in there to support the stock through the unlock.” He added, “Stocks are supposed to be investments in companies that earn profits, and that profitability is a long way out”.
That doesn’t quite mean SpaceX will derail the wider technology trade. In fact, if the market weakens, some investors may prefer to move back into established mega-cap technology names with proven earnings, rather than rotate aggressively into a newly public SpaceX.
But it does create a clear test: can public markets digest one of the largest IPOs in history at a valuation that already assumes years of growth, execution, and eventual profitability?
Anthropic offers a cleaner enterprise AI test
Anthropic presents a different question. While SpaceX is an infrastructure and connectivity platform, Anthropic is a more direct enterprise AI story. Its Claude models are used for coding, business workflows, large-context analysis and API-driven applications. Reuters reported that Anthropic last raised US$65 billion at a post-money valuation of US$965 billion, putting it among the most valuable private technology companies in the world.
Anthropic’s public-market pitch is likely to centre on enterprise adoption, developer demand, and whether businesses are willing to pay consistently for frontier AI tools. That makes it a cleaner test of the software side of the AI boom.
OpenAI brings brand power — and bigger public-market questions
OpenAI comes to the table with the strongest brand recognition; a table that could have been built with a step-by-step guide from ChatGPT. The now ubiquitous tool has become the consumer face of generative AI, while OpenAI has also expanded into enterprise tools, coding products and API access.
Reuters has reported that OpenAI could seek a valuation of up to US$1 trillion in a stock market debut that could come as early as September, although the company has not yet set a formal timeline.
A public listing would likely come with intense scrutiny. Investors will want to understand OpenAI’s compute costs, infrastructure commitments, governance structure, Microsoft relationship, monetization strategy and timeline to sustainable profitability. In other words, OpenAI may have the strongest brand, but it may also face the hardest public-market questions.
That is the common thread across all three companies. Each is asking investors to value not only current revenue, but the infrastructure required to dominate the next decade of technology.
Why AI infrastructure matters for copper, uranium and power
For investors, the relevance extends well beyond whether they buy shares on IPO day. These listings could reshape how public markets value the entire AI and space supply chain.
AI models require chips, data centres, cooling systems, electricity and grid capacity. Satellite networks require launch systems, communications hardware, advanced materials, ground stations and manufacturing scale. That creates potential read-throughs for sectors already familiar to Canadian growth investors, including copper, uranium, energy storage, power generation, data-centre infrastructure, cybersecurity, edge computing, satellite communications and industrial automation.
The power angle is especially important. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects global electricity consumption from data centres to roughly double by 2030, with AI-focused data-centre electricity use growing even faster. That turns AI from a software theme into a hard-infrastructure theme, linking future model growth to power availability, grid investment, cooling technology, and critical materials.
Could mega-IPOs crowd out smaller growth stocks?
There is also a small-cap caution embedded in the story. A successful SpaceX IPO could revive risk appetite and reopen the door for more growth listings. But it could also concentrate investor attention on a handful of giant private companies, making it harder for smaller issuers to compete for capital.
A wave of mega-cap IPOs could reshape equity benchmarks and create meaningful implications for institutional investors and index managers, particularly where fast inclusion and limited free float affect passive flows, according to Slate Street.
That makes this moment more complicated than a simple IPO celebration.
The bull case is that SpaceX opens the door to a new public-market cycle for AI, space and infrastructure companies. The bear case is that these companies are arriving with valuations that already price in years of flawless execution, while profitability remains dependent on heavy capital spending, falling compute costs and continued investor patience.
SpaceX may be first through the door, but Anthropic and OpenAI are close behind. For public markets, the real test is not which company lists first. It is whether investors are ready to fund the AI infrastructure economy at trillion-dollar scale — and whether that enthusiasm eventually flows down to the smaller companies building the machinery underneath it.