The SpaceX IPO was a textbook success — raised $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation and now trades at a $2 trillion market cap on ~$35 billion of forward revenue — and it provides the blueprint Anthropic and OpenAI will follow.
Brad Gerstner argues SpaceX's massive, well-executed IPO — including innovations on lockups and index inclusion — gives Anthropic and OpenAI a proven playbook to follow for their anticipated public offerings. ✦ AI generated
Brad Gerstner · All-In Podcast · 2026-07-11 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 7:17
“What do you think the chances are they're public when we're sitting here and I'm skiing in Hokkaido?”
It was a hugely successful IPO. They raised $75 billion at 1.75 trillion. Okay, so it went out below where we are today. It's up 25%. You know, and let's call it on 35 billion of forward revenue. So if you think about that revenue multiple, it's trading at 2 trillion on roughly 35 billion of of forward revenue. It's an incredible achievement.
verbatim transcript · starts at 7:17
7:17I mean, it was textbook. It was a hugely successful IPO. They raised $75 billion at 1.75 trillion. Okay, so it went out below where we are today. It's up 25%. You know, and let's call it on 35 billion of forward revenue. So if you think about that revenue multiple, it's trading at 2 trillion on roughly 35 billion of of forward revenue. It's an incredible achievement. I think it was
7:42textbook. I think Anthropic and OpenAI were watching very closely because frankly we had not had an IPO of that size and to Elon's credit and to the team's credit Brett and Gwen they really pioneered some really smart and interesting things as part of that IPO. So, you know, you heard from Gavin Anthropics rumored to be, you know, trending over a 100red billion in revenue compared to the 35, right? If
8:08they exit the year at 100, that means their gap revenue next year could be well over a 100red. So, based on the SpaceX success, I think it would be a blockbuster IPO. And I think SpaceX has shown them the way on things like the total raise, pricing, liquidity, inclusion into the indexes, how to do the lock up. Like I think they've gone to school. >> It was a staged release in terms of
8:33getting out of the lockup. It has to hit certain milestones and some of those are time >> early inclusion in the index raise $75 billion like you know >> the early inclusion in the index. Let me have you unpack that for a second cuz people said, "Hey, maybe this feels >> unfair that they should be forced to buy it." What's your take on that? Is that just like
8:54>> haters going to hate or is there something to that? I think there was legitimate concern, right? This >> is legitimate concern. Yeah, >> the legitimate concern is that a company that had not been through the process of being vetted post IPO, there's a lot of volatility. You've seen that chart Jason that the the peak to trough draw down in the 6 months post IPO is 50%. We've seen
9:15a pretty big draw down here from the peak to trough >> as well. So you don't want to jam it into an index at the peak and then have a 30% draw down on top of people which often happens in IPOs cuz people get excited it runs ahead of itself. But they didn't do that here. There was fear that that was going to happen. So both the the exchanges and the indexes, they