4 Lessons for Future OpenAI and Anthropic Investors, Following SpaceX's Historic IPO
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), the aerospace and AI company founded by Elon Musk, went public on June 12 at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history. It went public at $135 per share, started trading at $150, and hit a record high of $225.64 on June 16.
But as of this writing, SpaceX's stock trades at about $160. Many investors who hopped on the bandwagon in its first four days are now underwater. That volatile market debut should teach investors four valuable lessons about hot IPOs like SpaceX -- and how they should approach OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the market's most eagerly anticipated AI IPOs, in the future.
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- Valuations matter
When SpaceX went public, it was already valued at 95 times its 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion. At its peak market cap of $2.66 trillion, it was valued at 142 times its trailing sales. Those were sky-high valuations, even for a company that grew its revenue by 33% in 2025. As of this writing, SpaceX is worth $2.1 trillion, or 112 times last year's sales.
OpenAI was most recently valued at $852 billion, and its founders hope to go public with a market cap of $1 trillion. That would be 50 times its annualized revenue run rate of $20 billion at the end of 2025, making it seem more reasonably valued than SpaceX.
Anthropic, valued at $965 billion after its latest funding round, only had an annualized revenue run rate of $9 billion at the end of 2025. If it's also targeting a $1 trillion IPO, it would debut at 111 times its annualized revenue -- making it more comparable to SpaceX.
- Profits matter
SpaceX was actually profitable in 2025, as Starlink's profits offset its space division's losses. But this year, it acquired xAI (which owns Grok and X) in an all-stock acquisition before its IPO. After recasting its 2025 financials to account for that acquisition, it became deeply unprofitable. The critics claimed that Musk was bailing out xAI at the expense of SpaceX's shareholders.
OpenAI and Anthropic -- which are both unprofitable -- will also be closely scrutinized when they go public. OpenAI is still racking up steep losses, but Anthropic's rapid expansion in the enterprise market (with tools like Claude Code) is quickly reducing its operating losses. Anthropic even expects to post its first adjusted operating profit this year.