AI Three Giants Shake the Capital Market: SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic Could Create the Largest Exit Wave in US VC History

Odaily Planet Daily News: A recent "Venture Monitor" report released by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PitchBook indicates that following SpaceX's listing and the potential IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, the scale of value generated by these three companies will reach unprecedented levels. The report states, "With SpaceX's listing and the future exits of these companies, the value they create will surpass the total exit value of all US VC-backed companies since 2000," with the core factor being the extremely high valuation expectations of the three firms.

SpaceX is currently valued at approximately $1.77 trillion, while Anthropic and OpenAI are also moving towards trillion-dollar valuations. The market estimates that the combined valuation of the three companies could exceed $4 trillion. This scale far surpasses even the largest tech IPOs of the past. According to data from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), total IPO fundraising in the US last year was about $70 billion, whereas SpaceX's valuation alone has reached a level that traditional large IPOs find difficult to match. As a once-highly-watched tech IPO, 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 NVCA and PitchBook comparison is based on "enterprise value created," not the actual cash realized by investors. Meanwhile, the analysis does not include non-US companies like Alibaba. Furthermore, the value created by already listed companies such as Apple, Google Android, YouTube, and Instagram is also not counted in VC exit statistics.

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

The NVCA believes that this cycle of listings driven by artificial intelligence (AI) may further break these records. The analysis suggests there are two main reasons driving this trend:

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

Second, the AI industry is highly capital-intensive. Training large AI models requires massive investment, driving AI companies to continuously engage in large-scale fundraising and fueling rapid valuation growth.

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