CONTEXT
In coming ~4-10 months, three behemoths plan to file papers for IPOs, Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic (also AI). None of these IPOs make a lick of sense based on current company valuations, the cash already sunk in, and their vaporware business models. When retail and professional investors buy IPO stock and the insider lock-up periods expire within ~6 months, they are going to lose, lose, lose.
Despite the obvious but nonetheless breathtaking stupidity of it all, most MSM reporting focuses on the galactic size of the deals or on the juicy personalities involved, e.g., Musk owns ~85% of SpaceX and his IPO would push him close to being a trillionaire. Most of the MSM loves reporting all the big numbers and juicy gossip. They fucking ignore the hyper-crappy business models behind these IPOs.
Here's a fun example of the MSM’s irrational exuberance reporting. Nicolas Owens, an equity researcher with the investment research firm Morningstar, said that while SpaceX’s IPO was enormous, commenting: “A trillion-dollar market capitalization for a company going public used to be unheard-of. Now it seems normal.” [1]
Germaine: No, a trillion market cap does not seem remotely close to normal, you blithering idiot. How much is Musk paying Morningstar to say such outrageous bullshit? It must be a lot.
Idiot squad: Yee-Haw! Musk has 13 babies we know of, with some attached baby lawsuits. Now back to the deal, what comes after trillion? Oh yeah, quadrillion (1,000 trillion)! That's the next new thing!! I wanna buy into a quadrillion deal, right now!!
The SPACEX deal
Public information releases indicate SpaceX is targeting a valuation in the roughly 1.5–2.0 trillion dollar range. The IPO would raise roughly 50–75 billion dollars in the offering. That’s the largest IPO in history. SpaceX generated ~18–19 billion dollars of revenue in 2025 and still loses billions per year. That valuation implies ~60–100 times forward sales, and near 100 times trailing sales. Those multiples are far above the most highly valued mega‑cap tech firms usually get. Independent analysts who try to back into earnings needed to justify a $1.5 trillion market cap estimate that SpaceX would have to be earning roughly $80 billion/year within about a decade. FFS, that’s more than Berkshire Hathaway’s recent profits and in the same neighborhood as the “Magnificent Seven” giants. WTF? Link, link
To make those numbers work, Musk’s IPO marketing blither leans on a fantastically large total addressable market (TAM) covering not only launch and satellite internet, but also AI infrastructure, cloud compute, consumer subscriptions, advertising, and enterprise AI applications. One widely discussed Musk “analysis” attributes roughly $28–28.5 trillion of future annual TAM to SpaceX’s combined businesses. There is a few hundred billion for space “solutions” (whatever that means), about 1.6 trillion for Starlink broadband and mobile, 2.4 trillion for AI infrastructure, hundreds of billions for consumer subscriptions (bullshit alert!) and digital ads, and more than 22 trillion for enterprise AI applications (whatever that means). Analysts note that this implies (1) a target market roughly the size of the entire current US economy, and (2) an enterprise AI market tens of times larger than today’s entire enterprise software industry, while also effectively assuming that every single household will come to use Starlink connectivity. These inputs are not professional, mainstream consensus forecasts. Those numbers are Musk’s blue‑sky fantasy, Musk‑centric marketing bullshit. Musk’s BS is presented to rationalize the IPO numbers and sell the deal to people and investors dumb enough but believe Musk’s BS and rich enough to piss away some of their own, or someone else’s, money.
Verdict: The SpaceX IPO is a vaporware rip-off, but it probably is legal!
The OpenAI, and Anthropic deals
This story is just as good a deal, or bad depending on how you see it.
The lock-up story: As with the SpaceX deal, these two companies may be considering a “staggered lock‑up”, where existing shareholders can sell in waves rather than a single cliff, potentially starting almost immediately after the IPO. The lock-up is a period where insiders who bought stock at a low price before the IPO have to wait a while before they can sell after an IPO. Once those lock-up periods expire, usually 90-180 days, the stock price can drop like a rock, leaving the IPO investors eating huge losses.
There are variations. SpaceX’s IPO uses a staggered, tiered lock‑up where insiders can sell specified percentages at multiple dates instead of a single 6‑month cliff. Some selling is allowed relatively soon after the IPO and around earnings. No final lock‑up language is public yet for OpenAI and Anthropic.
The business hype and fantasy: OpenAI and Anthropic both lean hard on “world‑defining” narratives and trillion‑scale market projections to justify IPO‑level valuations. However, their hype rhetoric glosses over very large, long‑term loss profiles and massive execution risks. Recent marketing hype paints OpenAI as a hyper‑growth but deeply loss‑making “juggernaut”. By contrast, Anthropic spin is it’s the more “disciplined, safety‑centric” alternative, Both companies assert huge, largely unproven assumptions about how big and profitable their modeled market actually gets. Link, link, link
OpenAI: Reporting to investors emphasize that OpenAI’s run‑rate revenue could hit roughly 20 billion annually, but notes forecasts of around 14 billion in losses in 2026 and cumulative losses potentially exceeding 100 billion by the end of the decade due to compute and infrastructure spending. The core argument is that enormous, upfront expenses will eventually create a dominant AGI platform with decades of high‑margin returns, while near‑term modeling is spun as “spend first, profits much later”.
Reporting to retail investors repeat projections that the addressable AI market will be measured in the tens of trillions over time. The hype implies that OpenAI is poised to capture a huge slice of that, but while also warning that its valuation relative to its actual sales is stretched and that profits may not arrive until the 2030s. Link
Anthropic: Multiple reports say Anthropic is pursuing, or has privately discussed, valuations on the order of 900 billion, with funding‑round coverage emphasizing that it has “closed in on a 1 trillion valuation” ahead of an IPO. That puts Anthropic fairly close to OpenAI, despite being smaller in revenue.
Anthropic’s marketing and sympathetic commentary spin a “do more with less” strategy. That emphasizes algorithmic efficiency, better training data, and more careful deployment, whatever that means. It does not try to match OpenAI’s extreme compute arms race. Pieces on its communication strategy stress that it is deliberately telling a “profitability and integrity” story, arguing revenue increase of 10x per year for several years, a dedicated “social impacts” team (whatever that means), and a brand built around safety and trust as a differentiator.
That sales pitch is flimsy at best. Deceptive is a better description of Anthropic hype.
Probably the most likely way that OpenAI, and Anthropic marketing can come remotely close to business projections is to believe that their main product will be replacing millions of workers from their jobs. Consumer subscriptions and other BS markets cannot come anywhere close to meeting the sales propaganda behind their gigantic IPO scam.
Verdict: These IPOs are a vaporware rip-off, but they probably are legal!
Q: Could the end of the lock-up periods for SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic trigger a massive collapse of American financial markets and economy?[2]
Footnote:
1. In it's defense, Morningstar explicitly says that the targeted $780 billion IPO valuation implies that the company is significantly overvalued. It warns that investors might get better stock prices after the IPO. But it does not say investors will ever make any money.
2. Consensus financial expert analysis says that the end of the lock-up periods will not trigger a massive collapse of American financial markets or the American economy. Maybe that expert analysis is correct. We might get an opportunity to find out. As the experts tell us over and over, past performance does not predict future returns.
Sooner or later we will be dragged down by, the combination of (1) MAGA’s economically inefficient corruption and gross governance incompetence, plus (2) massive growing and unsustainable federal debt (~$40 trillion on the books, and ~$75 trillion off the books), plus (3) vast damage to democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and the public interest. Sooner or later something is going to snap. The herd (investors and the public) will spook. The stampede for the exit doors will blow the building to smithereens. Arguably, the question is when, not if.
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