The US capital markets are about to witness the largest wave of tech listings in recent years.
On June 8, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, announced that it had confidentially submitted an application for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, becoming the second AI giant after Anthropic to formally initiate the listing process.
At the same time, SpaceX is widely expected to be preparing for a public listing, potentially in the second half of the year. These three companies represent the top players in generative AI, enterprise-grade foundation models, and commercial spaceflight, with valuations already reaching or approaching the trillion-dollar level, respectively.
Although all three are globally outstanding technology leaders operating in industries with enormous potential, the sheer scale and pace of these megafundraising events have raised concerns in the capital markets about whether the historic "curse" will repeat itself—where every past bubble burst was preceded by a wave of mega-listings by industry giants.
According to recent public fundraising and market documents, Anthropic completed a new financing round at the end of May, achieving a valuation of US$965 billion, making it one of the highest-valued AI unicorns to date. The round raised approximately US$65 billion.
As Anthropic's most direct competitor, OpenAI reached a post-money valuation of US$852 billion after completing a financing round in March of this year. The company subsequently secured over US$120 billion in committed capital, further solidifying its leading position in the AI industry.
Meanwhile, SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, is widely expected by the market to go public with a valuation between US$1.5 trillion and US$1.8 trillion. Some market analyses have even projected a valuation approaching US$2 trillion.
Based on current market valuations, the combined value of the three companies stands at nearly US$3.7 trillion. This figure is close to the total annual economic output of India, the world's sixth-largest economy in 2025, which reached US$3.87 trillion.
Looking at these companies individually, OpenAI maintains a clear lead in the consumer market. The market widely expects OpenAI to potentially go public as early as the second half of this year.
According to recently disclosed data, ChatGPT, OpenAI's generative AI product, has over 900 million weekly active users, and OpenAI's monthly revenue has reached approximately US$2 billion.
One of the key reasons capital markets are bullish on OpenAI is its user base and ecosystem influence. Over the past year, OpenAI has continuously expanded its product lines, including enterprise services, developer tools, AI agents, and video generation products, aiming to transform ChatGPT from a standalone chatbot into a comprehensive AI platform.
However, high growth has not fully eliminated investor concerns about profitability. Market research firms estimate that OpenAI's revenue in 2025 will be approximately US$13.1 billion, but due to high costs associated with model training, data center construction, and compute procurement, the company remains unprofitable. Some analyses project its losses could reach around US$14 billion in 2026.
If OpenAI dominates the consumer market, then Anthropic, relying on its Claude series of models, is rapidly emerging in the enterprise market.
According to Reuters, Anthropic's enterprise customer subscription base grew significantly in 2026. At the end of May, the company announced that its annualized revenue run rate had reached approximately US$47 billion. The widespread adoption of development tools such as Claude Code has also helped Anthropic gain market share in software development and enterprise automation.
Compared to OpenAI, Anthropic has consistently emphasized AI safety and risk control. Recently, Anthropic even publicly called for a global slowdown in the development of cutting-edge AI models, sparking industry controversy.
Nevertheless, the capital markets continue to assign an extremely high valuation to Anthropic. In February of this year, its valuation reached US$380 billion; just months later, a new financing round pushed it to US$965 billion, nearly tripling its value.
Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, SpaceX's core business is not artificial intelligence. However, since its sister company xAI was integrated into its operations, SpaceX has also transformed into a compute provider and become highly engaged in the development of the AI industry.
Currently, with the continued expansion of the Starlink satellite internet business and the increasing market share of rocket launch services, SpaceX has become one of the world's most valuable private technology companies.
The market expects SpaceX's IPO valuation to range between US$1.5 trillion and US$1.8 trillion, with the offering size potentially reaching US$75 billion to US$80 billion, which could make it one of the largest IPOs in history.
Data shows that SpaceX's revenue in 2025 was approximately US$18.7 billion, primarily from Starlink subscription services, commercial launch services, and government contracts. However, the company also faces significant losses: it lost US$4.94 billion in 2025 and reported a net loss of US$4.3 billion in Q1 2026, bringing its cumulative losses to US$41.3 billion.
Nonetheless, many institutions believe that SpaceX remains an outstanding aerospace company and, at the same time, a platform company that controls global communications infrastructure, with unlimited potential.
Thus, from OpenAI to Anthropic to SpaceX, the common characteristic of all three companies is that their valuations far exceed their current profitability. Some analysts argue that the valuation multiples the market is assigning to these companies are significantly higher than those of traditional technology firms.
For example, Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University, often called the "father of valuation," has recently questioned some tech companies' forecasts of future market sizes. He believes that some expectations are approaching or even exceeding reasonable ranges—for instance, SpaceX's valuation should be US$1.3 trillion, not as high as US$1.8 trillion.
In the coming months, as Anthropic and OpenAI advance their IPO processes and SpaceX potentially launches its listing plan, investors will, for the first time, use real money to price the three most important unlisted technology companies of the AI era.
(Source: 36kr)
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