SpaceX And OpenAI File For Historic IPOs As Anthropic Surges

HSHarry Stebbings@HarryStebbings

Holy s***. Last week was the Superbowl of S-1’s. SpaceX and OpenAI. This is happening. The largest IPO in history is taking shape. I sat down with @jasonlk and @rodriscoll to discuss the filing, along with the biggest news in tech this week: - Anthropic hits $44B ARR, projects first profitable quarter, and laps OpenAI on revenue - Nvidia Prints $81.6B… but the Market Yawns? - Exa, OpenRouter and Polsia Raise Mega Rounds - Uber and Microsoft Declare AI ROI for Developers is Questionable My notes below: 1. Is OpenAI Rushing to Go Public Before Anthropic? OpenAI may need to rush its IPO to protect its category leader narrative from Anthropic. OpenAI did $5.4B to $5.5B in Q1, while Anthropic generated $5B, matching its entire prior year in a single quarter. With Anthropic growing 10x year over year versus OpenAI’s 2 to 3x pace, it could soon become the bigger, more profitable business. 2. Do Venture Investors Have to Risk More With Less? The venture playbook has shifted from the SaaS era. VCs now have to back higher valuations on far less information. Waiting for one-year renewals or clean trailing data is a losing strategy because AI adoption curves move too fast. Success now requires acting on raw product traction and market conviction. 3. What Is the Right Venture Play in AI? Traditional seed investing has become a bottleneck. The winning move is wiring capital the moment a breakout leader emerges. These startups can move from pre-revenue to hyper-scale almost overnight, so investors have to underwrite real-time momentum instead of waiting for the market to settle. 4. Is SpaceX the GeoCities of Our Time? At 100x trailing sales, SpaceX risks becoming the GeoCities deal of the AI era if market euphoria fades. Its valuation is detached from traditional discounted cash flow models and depends on a massive Elon Premium that multiplies its baseline economic value. 5. Why the SpaceX S-1 Does Not Make Sense Combining unrelated assets into the SpaceX S-1 looks like financial engineering designed to hide weaker pieces of the story. It uses AI hype to absorb Twitter’s revenue collapse and expensive chip clusters that failed to compete with OpenAI. It feels like SolarCity on steroids, using a clean private business to bail out an insular investor circle. 6. What Will SpaceX’s Core Business Be in Five Years? Starlink will likely drive most of SpaceX’s value. Terrestrial data centers remain a low-ROE business, and space data centers are still negligible. The valuation only works if Jensen Huang’s $3T to $4T CapEx vision hits by 2030 and Earth power constraints force compute infrastructure into space. 7. Are Tech Layoffs From COVID Overhiring or AI Efficiency? Blaming layoffs on COVID overhiring does not hold up after years of normal attrition. Corporate America is redirecting opex from mid-level headcount toward token budgets and agentic automation. Companies are cutting average roles to overpay elite, highly productive talent who use AI workflows to multiply output. (links below)

HSHarry Stebbings@HarryStebbings

Holy s***. Last week was the Superbowl of S-1’s. SpaceX and OpenAI. This is happening. The largest IPO in history is taking shape. I sat down with @jasonlk and @rodriscoll to discuss the filing, along with the biggest news in tech this week: - Anthropic hits $44B ARR, projects first profitable quarter, and laps OpenAI on revenue - Nvidia Prints $81.6B… but the Market Yawns? - Exa, OpenRouter and Polsia Raise Mega Rounds - Uber and Microsoft Declare AI ROI for Developers is Questionable My notes below: 1. Is OpenAI Rushing to Go Public Before Anthropic? OpenAI may need to rush its IPO to protect its category leader narrative from Anthropic. OpenAI did $5.4B to $5.5B in Q1, while Anthropic generated $5B, matching its entire prior year in a single quarter. With Anthropic growing 10x year over year versus OpenAI’s 2 to 3x pace, it could soon become the bigger, more profitable business. 2. Do Venture Investors Have to Risk More With Less? The venture playbook has shifted from the SaaS era. VCs now have to back higher valuations on far less information. Waiting for one-year renewals or clean trailing data is a losing strategy because AI adoption curves move too fast. Success now requires acting on raw product traction and market conviction. 3. What Is the Right Venture Play in AI? Traditional seed investing has become a bottleneck. The winning move is wiring capital the moment a breakout leader emerges. These startups can move from pre-revenue to hyper-scale almost overnight, so investors have to underwrite real-time momentum instead of waiting for the market to settle. 4. Is SpaceX the GeoCities of Our Time? At 100x trailing sales, SpaceX risks becoming the GeoCities deal of the AI era if market euphoria fades. Its valuation is detached from traditional discounted cash flow models and depends on a massive Elon Premium that multiplies its baseline economic value. 5. Why the SpaceX S-1 Does Not Make Sense Combining unrelated assets into the SpaceX S-1 looks like financial engineering designed to hide weaker pieces of the story. It uses AI hype to absorb Twitter’s revenue collapse and expensive chip clusters that failed to compete with OpenAI. It feels like SolarCity on steroids, using a clean private business to bail out an insular investor circle. 6. What Will SpaceX’s Core Business Be in Five Years? Starlink will likely drive most of SpaceX’s value. Terrestrial data centers remain a low-ROE business, and space data centers are still negligible. The valuation only works if Jensen Huang’s $3T to $4T CapEx vision hits by 2030 and Earth power constraints force compute infrastructure into space. 7. Are Tech Layoffs From COVID Overhiring or AI Efficiency? Blaming layoffs on COVID overhiring does not hold up after years of normal attrition. Corporate America is redirecting opex from mid-level headcount toward token budgets and agentic automation. Companies are cutting average roles to overpay elite, highly productive talent who use AI workflows to multiply output. (links below)