AI Giants Shake Up Capital Markets: SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic Could Create the Biggest Exit Wave in US VC History

2026-07-10 13:10

Odaily reports that the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PitchBook recently released the "Venture Monitor" report, noting that after SpaceX's listing and the potential IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, the combined value generated by these three companies will reach an unprecedented level. The report states: "With SpaceX going public, combined with the future exits of these companies, the value created will surpass the total exit value of all US VC-backed companies since 2000." The core factor lies in the extremely high valuation expectations of these three companies.

SpaceX is currently valued at approximately $1.77 trillion, while Anthropic and OpenAI are also moving towards multi-trillion-dollar enterprise valuations. The market estimates that the combined valuation of the three companies could exceed $4 trillion. This scale far surpasses past large-scale tech IPOs. Data from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that total US IPO fundraising last year was about $70 billion, whereas SpaceX's single-company valuation has already reached a level that traditional large-scale IPOs find hard to match. As a once-highly-watched tech IPO case, Uber was valued at around $84 billion when it went public in 2019, which is less than 5% of SpaceX's current valuation.

However, the comparison by NVCA and PitchBook is based on "enterprise value created," not the actual cash-out amounts for investors. Additionally, the analysis does not include non-US companies like Alibaba. Furthermore, the value created by already-public companies such as Apple, Google Android, YouTube, and Instagram is not counted in the VC exit statistics.

The report points out that over the past 25 years, the US tech market has seen several historic IPOs, including Google in 2004, Tesla in 2010, and Meta in 2012. These companies have since become some of the world's most valuable enterprises. Additionally, companies like LinkedIn, Slack, and WhatsApp were acquired for over $20 billion.

The NVCA believes that the current IPO cycle driven by artificial intelligence (AI) could further break these records. The analysis suggests two main reasons driving this trend:

First, tech companies are staying private for longer periods than in the past, accumulating higher valuations through prolonged financing and business expansion. If today's Google were in its early stages, it might also choose to go public later to achieve a higher market valuation.

Second, the AI industry is highly capital-intensive. Training large AI models requires massive investment, pushing AI companies to continuously raise substantial funds and driving rapid valuation growth.

Industry insiders believe that the potential scale of IPOs by SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI will test the capacity of the US capital market. As AI companies transition from the private financing stage to the public market, how trillions of dollars in tech assets flow into the stock market will become a focus for investors. (DigitalToday)