The AI boom is so driven by private capital that there should be many more small IPOs to give companies acquisition currency, but founders are avoiding going public.
Cuban argues that AI companies should go public to use stock as acquisition currency, but founders resist — and he tells his portfolio companies to 'go public, motherfuckers.' ✦ AI generated
Mark Cuban · All-In Podcast · 2026-07-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 6:53
In this particular bubble, because it's so driven by private capital, there should be a lot more companies going public, not at the SpaceX level, not OpenAI, not Anthropic, but the hundred million dollar IPO. Because if AI does what AI does, we all know what it'll do in terms of disruption. Then you want to have some sort of currency that allows you to buy all those companies. If you don't have that currency, the stock is currency, you're going to have to go out and raise money to do it.
verbatim transcript · starts at 6:53
6:43yeah >> yeah the famous collar uh if you were a clawed employee if you're at anthropic you're at openi is it uh time to start thinking about the collar trying to thinking about yeah pairing the >> position you know I collared my stock because how rich do I need to be >> right >> you know and if you if you're able to change your life. If I work for any
7:04SpaceX, any of them, whatever, I'd be like, you know, somebody put together a collar for me. Yeah. You know, because I just need to be protected, save part for my upside, but just cover my downside. >> Yeah. Um when you did it, you had to >> like um actually orchestrate that, right? It didn't exist as a product. >> No, it didn't. So, I had to actually create an index of internet stocks. I
7:26had Goldman Sachs create an index of internet stocks that I thought sucked. And then I shorted that index because we and we had to follow all the laws and I just had to have that short in place until I was able to do a real collar in the market on my Yahoo stock. Yeah. >> And I lost tens of millions of dollars on that short. Yeah. >> But I made up for it.
7:46>> Yeah. I mean the one of the great trades of all time. Uh what do you think the the this wave of capabilities in AI? I'm sure you play with it because you've always been a tinkerer. So maybe what are you tinkering with and what do you think um is going to be the most world changing you know in the next 5 10 years for entrepreneurs for society where do
8:12you look at it and go hey let's work backwards yeah >> okay so AI is a lot harder to implement than anybody expected >> for sure >> right you know you can do an agent pretty straightforward right you can prompt away you know we cheated on tests we you know cheated at work you know did projects improved productivity 100x, right? All easy peasy. And we just assumed, you know, at the enterprise
8:35it'd be just as easy. >> It's hard. >> Yeah. >> And it's terrifying. And not terrifying for employees because Dario and everybody saying 50% of white collar people are going to lose their jobs. Here we are two years later, they said within [clears throat] two years and you know, employment still growing, people are hiring, we need more AI literate people, right? So CEOs have no clue what