The Numbers Don't Add Up — And That's the Point

SpaceX is heading to the public markets next week targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation. That would make it bigger than Meta, bigger than Walmart, bigger than Tesla.

The company lost $4.3 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone, according to its own SEC filing. A company burning billions per quarter is about to become one of the ten most valuable on the planet.

This reflects the logic of the AI era — investors betting on future returns, not current performance.

Three Boulders, One Kiddie Pool

SpaceX going public isn't an isolated event. It's the opening act.

On Monday, June 2, Anthropic filed confidential documents to begin its own IPO process, targeting a public offering as early as this fall, according to The Atlantic. OpenAI is reportedly preparing to follow. All three companies could be valued at $1 trillion or more when they list.

For context: JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil are both worth less than $1 trillion. These AI companies would leapfrog the backbone of American finance and energy almost overnight.

Anthropic's president, Daniela Amodei, put it plainly this week: "It's a very capital-intensive business to train AI models" and an IPO is "very well-suited to that."

They need capital to fund their ambitions.

This Is About Data Centers, Not Mars

Most coverage — including from outlets across the spectrum — keeps anchoring on the space angle. Rockets, Mars, Musk the dreamer. The real story is different.

SpaceX's actual pitch to investors is infrastructure for AI. The company's SEC filing states that AI will eventually consume a portion of the economy equivalent to a significant share of U.S. GDP. Musk wants to launch data centers into orbit to harvest cheap solar power at scale. That's a capital allocation strategy.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly stated he wants to build one gigawatt of data-center capacity every single week. One gigawatt is roughly what a major American city draws in power. The cost would run into the tens of billions of dollars — per week.

These companies aren't raising money because business is booming. They're raising money because the infrastructure bill for what they're trying to build is almost incomprehensibly large.

What the Left-Leaning Coverage Is Missing

The Atlantic's framing — "dropping boulders in a kiddie pool" — captures the market disruption angle reasonably well. But it sidesteps a critical question: who absorbs the risk when these companies fail to deliver?

Once these stocks are publicly traded, the downside shifts from venture capitalists to retail investors — teachers, nurses, people with 401(k)s. The institutional money will get in early at favorable prices. Regular Americans will buy in on the hype.

OpenAI is unprofitable. Anthropic might post its first profitable quarter ever at the end of June 2026 — might. SpaceX is losing $4.3 billion per quarter. These are not stable, cash-generating businesses being offered to the public. They are bets on a future that has not arrived yet.

The coverage cheerleading the "AI IPO supercycle" obscures that reality.

What the Right-Leaning Coverage Tends to Miss

On the other side, dismissing these valuations as pure bubble mania gets it wrong.

The capital requirements for AI infrastructure are real. The competitive pressure from China is real — Beijing is subsidizing its own AI buildout aggressively, and falling behind in that race has genuine national security consequences. If American AI companies can't raise capital to build, that's a problem that goes beyond stock prices.

This isn't Pets.com. The underlying technology works. The question is whether the valuations are rational, not whether the businesses are legitimate.

The Musk Trillionaire Question

If SpaceX lists at $1.77 trillion and Musk's stake holds, he becomes the world's first trillionaire. His current net worth already leads the planet.

People will have opinions about that.

The more important question is what a $1.77 trillion SpaceX IPO does to capital markets. Institutional funds will be forced to buy in simply to maintain index weightings. That means money flowing out of other sectors — potentially including established industrial companies, energy firms, and banks — and into a company that is currently losing money at a historic rate.

That reallocation of capital is the real story.

What This Means For You

If you have a 401(k) tied to index funds, you will likely own a piece of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI whether you choose to or not — because index funds buy the market, and these companies are about to BE the market.

You didn't get a vote on that. The bankers and the founders made that decision for you.

Buy in with eyes open. The upside is real. So is the $4.3 billion quarterly loss.