AI companies are rushing to go public – and everyone’s buying in
Three new tech giants are raising capital for a stock market debut. And since index providers like Nasdaq and MSCI are changing their rules, risky AI stocks are ending up in almost every portfolio. But how bad are they really?
SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are gearing up for their initial public offerings (IPOs). All three will need to raise mountains of money for data centres, chips and staff. Whoever taps into the public market first will gain an advantage in accessing capital – and thus more computing power than the competition.
These IPOs will be three of the largest ever. And here’s the interesting bit: despite their size, these companies wouldn’t normally be included in stock indexes such as the Nasdaq 100, MSCI World and FTSE All World. But providers are rushing to change their rules so that AI companies can end up in the portfolios of countless investors within just a few days. This does raise ethical concerns, but there’s no need to panic.
SpaceX: big dreams, big losses
Elon Musk’s space and AI company will enter the stock market on 12 June. Even to this day, it’s deep in the red. In total, their losses last year amounted to 4.9 billion dollars, with revenue at 18.7 billion dollars. The only profitable subsidiary is Starlink, currently sporting a rapidly growing annual profit of 4.4 billion dollars. In February 2026, Musk also merged SpaceX with his AI company, xAI. Over the course of 2025, it burned through 6.4 billion dollars. There’s no end in sight to these losses, all while enormous investments in new infrastructure are being planned.
Source: SpaceX
Put plainly: anyone who buys a SpaceX share will receive a financial rocket in the form of Starlink. However, Elon Musk has strapped two unstable fuel tanks to this solid performer – SpaceX and xAI. For his bet to pay off in the end, Musk’s visions for space and AI have to come true. This’d work best when combined with data centres in low Earth orbit.
SpaceX plans to offer just over four per cent of the company as new shares in a public offering – hoping to raise 75 billion dollars this way. Musk is aiming for a total market capitalisation of 1.77 trillion dollars, corresponding to a price-to-sales ratio (P/S ratio) of nearly 95. By comparison, the P/S ratio of the highly profitable Nvidia is around 22, already a high bar.
The free float – the percentage of shares available for trading – will be miniscule early on, then. 96 per cent of the company will stay in the hands of private investors – Elon Musk chief among them with over 40 per cent. If his plan works out, the SpaceX IPO will make him the world’s first trillionaire – on paper. Musk has agreed to hold on to his shares for at least one year after the initial public offering. Other investors will likely be subject to a lock-up period of 90 to 180 days.
Anthropic: growth driven by corporate clients
The company behind chatbot Claude is expected to be the first pure AI giant to go public. Anthropic has filed the required S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Their stock could be listed on the exchange as early as autumn 2026. With their latest round of financing in May 2026, the company raised 65 billion dollars (article in German). This brought their total valuation to approximately 965 billion dollars – exceeding OpenAI for the first time.
Their estimated revenue currently sits around 47 billion dollars per year. Many times higher than last year, but still only a fraction of the latest figures from established software giants (see chart below). Their main drivers of growth are corporate customers and programming assistant Claude Code. But despite all the hype, their business model is risky. Exact figures haven’t been made public yet, but here’s the gist of it: Anthropic will likely post significant losses. Mainly due to expensive servers and high staff costs.
Source: Anthropic
Add to this political and regulatory uncertainties: the U.S. government has barred the company from certain contracts since Anthropic refuses to allow widespread military use of its models. This could cost billions in revenue and is deterring parts of the market. Other analysts, however, see this approach as a plus since it enhances the company’s image.
It remains to be seen how much capital Anthropic plans to raise through its initial public offering. Estimates put the figure at around 60 billion dollars. With a valuation of just under one trillion, this would result in a tradable free float of six per cent at market entry. Slightly more than SpaceX, but still well below past tech IPOs, which typically made between 15 and 25 per cent of their company publicly available.
OpenAI: are chatbots profitable for the masses?
The OG (original gangster) of the chatbot craze was valued at 852 billion dollars after its last round of financing in March 2026. OpenAI is also expected to file its IPO plans with the SEC soon. After all, even Sam Altman’s company seems to have slowly exhausted the private capital market, yet it still needs money for new servers. Now that a court has dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk over its transition to a for-profit company, the path towards an IPO is clear.
Just like Anthropic, OpenAI hasn’t yet disclosed any specific financial figures. Their losses will likely be even greater, since Altman’s targeting the general public with ChatGPT rather than affluent corporate clients. Annual revenue in 2025 was approximately 20 billion dollars, less than half of Anthropic’s revenue. As with all AI companies, it also remains to be seen how profitable the LLM business will be in the long term. After all, the competition is fierce, including from low-cost open-weight models out of China.
According to Reuters, OpenAI is planning its IPO with a total valuation of one trillion U.S. dollars. Following estimates, the company aims to raise around 60 billion on the open market. This would correspond to the same six per cent free float that’s expected for Anthropic.
Everyone’s investing
With valuations in the trillions, SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are some of the world’s most valuable companies. This makes them eligible for inclusion in market-capitalisation-weighted stock indexes such as the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500 and MSCI World. Before now, however, companies had to meet certain rules and deadlines before they could be admitted. Here are some of the Nasdaq 100 rules:
- A company must have been listed on the stock exchange for at least three months.
- The free-float must be at least ten per cent
None of the three AI companies meet these criteria. Nevertheless, they’re expected to be included in the Nasdaq 100 within 15 days. They’ll also join the MSCI World after ten days and the FTSE All World after five.
How? Simple: index providers are changing their rules on short notice. Officially, their reason for doing this is to provide a more accurate reflection of the market. According to them, the old rules no longer fit today’s reality, in which even giant companies remain privately held for longer. Only the S&P Dow Jones is sticking to its rules, according to which new companies are eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 no sooner than twelve months after a listing – and only if they are profitable.
The unofficial reasons are greed and FOMO. The Nasdaq 100 was the first domino to fall. Nasdaq isn’t just an index provider, but a stock exchange as well. IPOs of this magnitude are a billion-dollar business for the exchange. Reports indicate that Elon Musk threatened not to list SpaceX on Nasdaq, but rather on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), if the stock didn’t make it into the Nasdaq 100 at lightning speed. MSCI and FTSE followed suit. Out of fear that their indexes would otherwise appear outdated and they’d lose market share.
Every Swiss resident will indirectly invest in three high-risk AI companies.
As a result, many ETFs that track major indexes will have to buy shares in SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. Such index funds can be found in the portfolios of most individual investors, pension funds and third-pillar retirement plans that include equities. In short, nearly every Swiss resident will indirectly invest in these three high-risk AI companies.
Who really benefits from IPOs
Since ETF investors are essentially forced to buy, prices are driven up. Probably even before the indexes actually list the companies, since this future demand is priced in immediately. SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are likely to trade at high prices from day one. And that’s exactly the price at which they’ll ultimately end up in your pension fund’s portfolio.
Source: Shutterstock
Founders, employees and private investors who owned shares prior to the initial public offering usually purchased them at significantly lower prices. Once the lock-up period ends, they can sell their shares on the stock market at current market prices and realise substantial profits. The funds for this will come from the general public, who will purchase the additional shares. The more insiders sell their shares, the bigger the free float becomes. If demand doesn’t rise proportionally, prices will fall.
IPOs represent a transfer of wealth from small and medium-sized businesses to the tech elite in Silicon Valley.
In the most optimistic scenario, AI companies will become so profitable in the long term that their stock prices will rise despite insider selling. Otherwise, we’ll all be stuck with expensive shares in SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI that suddenly lost most of their value. Or, to put it in Reddit slang: the insiders will cash out and retail investors are the bagholders. A transfer of wealth from small and medium-sized businesses to the tech elite in Silicon Valley. But it isn’t all doom and gloom; statistically, it’s the most likely outcome. On average, IPOs are terrible investments. After all, for every Google, there are three WeWorks.
How big of a problem is this?
But before you panic and sell your ETFs or call your retirement fund in a state of anxiety, take a breath. In absolute terms, the immediate financial risk for the average retail investor is low. Most stock indexes don’t weight companies based on their total market capitalisation, but rather on free-float capitalisation. Remember, that’s the portion of the share capital that’s actually available on public stock exchanges.
This distinction is essential. For example, Nvidia accounts for a full 5.5 per cent of the MSCI World Index. If you invest 100,000 francs in a corresponding ETF, you’re effectively buying Nvidia shares worth 5,500 francs. This isn’t merely because the chipmaker’s worth a fortune (5.4 trillion dollars): the company’s also almost entirely publicly traded (96 per cent, or 5.2 trillion dollars in free float).
The combined estimated initial free-float market capitalisation of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI is just 195 billion dollars – a fraction of Nvidia and also less than that of Roche, Switzerland’s most valuable company. Consequently, their weighting in most stock indexes would be correspondingly low:
- S&P 500: 0 per cent (not included in the index)
- MSCI World: 0.2 per cent
- FTSE All World: 0.2 per cent
The Nasdaq 100 is a special case. By its very nature, the index includes fewer companies and therefore represents a smaller portion of the market capitalisation. This gives individual values greater weight. In addition, the provider isn’t only adjusting its inclusion criteria, but is also tripling the weighting of mega-IPOs with a low free-float percentage (i.e. SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI). All things considered, the three AI companies could therefore account for up to 6.4 per cent of the index from the outset. Anyone investing in such an ETF should be aware of this.
For most people, the pragmatic answer to the question, «What should I do?» is: nothing.
If, on the other hand, you or your pension fund invests 100,000 francs in broadly diversified global ETFs, only about 200 francs of that will go to the new AI giants. This percentage may increase over time if the companies grow or expand their free float. But this is simply the nature of index funds. For most people, the pragmatic answer to the question, «What should I do?» is: nothing.
Disclaimer: as a private individual, the author of this article holds Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, which tracks the FTSE Global All Cap Index. It will be one of the first to be affected by these three IPOs.
My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.
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