By Shashwat Chauhan, Purvi Agarwal and Medha Singh
April 23 (Reuters) - SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are shaping up to deliver the largest wave of initial public offerings in history and the three companies are losing money, a combination without precedent in U.S. market debuts.
The trio could add $3 trillion in combined market value to the more than $69 trillion U.S. equity market, LPL Financial estimates, in listings likely to deliver the most consequential test of investor appetite for high-growth
technology stocks in the recent decade.
"Once we move past that excitement stage where everybody wants to own it, it's going to be really critical for these companies to show exactly what their profits are," said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise.
What sets these listings apart is a stark gap between valuation and fundamentals. In private markets, the three command valuations rivaling Meta and Palantir, but without their track record of sustained earnings.
Elon Musk's space and AI behemoth SpaceX alone is targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation in what would be the largest IPO ever, eclipsing Meta Platforms and Tesla in size. OpenAI is reportedly seeking a valuation of around $1 trillion and rival Anthropic was valued at $380 billion in a February funding round.
SpaceX, which is planning an IPO as early as June, posted a nearly $5 billion loss on more than $18.6 billion of revenue last year, according to excerpts of the company's confidential registration statement reviewed by Reuters. OpenAI and rival Anthropic are in early-stage preparations for their IPOs and are also unprofitable according to media reports.
The bull case is straightforward. SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet business is viewed by many investors as a potentially game-changing growth engine, even as the parent company burns cash on its AI startup xAI and in developing reusable rockets under its Starship program. OpenAI and Anthropic, meanwhile, sit at the center of the AI boom, with ChatGPT and Claude achieving rare mainstream traction for enterprise software.
The trio is tapping into investor appetite for high‑growth technologies that have handed a small group of companies an outsized grip on the S&P 500. The so‑called Magnificent Seven – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla – now account for about a third of the index weight.
That concentration reflects years of earnings dominance.
Tajinder Dhillon, head of earnings and equity research at LSEG, said the group of Magnificent Seven companies collectively delivered year‑on‑year earnings growth of 43.2% in 2023, 36.9% in 2024, and 25.3% in 2025. The remaining 493 companies in the index managed just -1.3%, 7.0% and 10.9% over those same years.
"Historically, return on equity has been particularly important in sustaining high equity valuations, as the market assumes high-ROE companies such as the Magnificent Seven can continue to reinvest without negative impacts on profitability," said Jamie Mills O'Brien, investment director at Aberdeen Investments.
At current valuations, SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic would be asking investors to extend that same faith.
THE PROFITABILITY GATE
Earnings also matter for index eligibility and could unlock the trillions of dollars in automatic buying that index inclusion triggers.
S&P Dow Jones Indices requires four consecutive quarters of profit and at least 12 months of public trading before a company can be considered for the S&P 500. Fund managers benchmarked against the index are required to hold every constituent stock, widening the companies' investor base.
Tesla listed in 2010 but did not enter the S&P 500 until about a decade later in December 2020, and only after achieving sustained profitability.
A similar timeline for SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic would mean years without the structural buying support that index membership provides.
Nasdaq said last month that it would speed up the entry of large-cap newcomers into the Nasdaq-100 index. Reuters reported that early inclusion in that index was a necessary condition for SpaceX's Nasdaq listing.
But the S&P 500, with more than $20 trillion in assets tied to it, remains the larger prize than the Nasdaq 100 at about $1.4 trillion. Its profitability rule is unchanged, though S&P Dow Jones Indices is also reportedly considering fast-track provisions for large-cap newcomers.
Some analysts warn that if companies of this scale do eventually join major indices, they could deepen a concentration already dominated by a handful of technology names.
"History shows that not every early leader in a new technology ends up being a long-term winner, which is why diversified exposure remains important," said Rodney Comegys, chief investment officer at Vanguard Capital Management.
(Additional reporting by Niket Nishant and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; writing by Sruthi Shankar; editing by Colin Barr and Devika Syamnath)
