_{THE NEXT DOT-COM CYCLE}

The Three IPOs of the Apocalypse?

SpaceX — $1.75 trillion, listing Thursday
The company that makes rockets is raising $75 billion in the largest IPO in history, more than double Saudi Aramco’s record from 2019. Up to 30% goes to retail investors, which is three times the industry standard and will generate more SpaceX hype content than you thought was humanly possible.

2025: $18.67 billion in revenue, $4.94 billion net loss, $41.3 billion accumulated deficit. Starlink is the real business: $11.4 billion in revenue, 63% EBITDA margins, 50% growth. Everything else: xAI, Starship, orbital compute, eventually Mars, is optionality. At $1.75 trillion you’re paying full price for Starlink and a very large premium for Elon’s ambitions. Whether that’s a good deal is a question for your investment committee.

Musk controls 42% of equity and 79% of votes, but don’t worry the remaining votes will be held by whoever Reddit nominates.

Anthropic — $1+ trillion, filed Monday
Anthropic filed confidential IPO paperwork on Monday, jumping ahead of OpenAI. It raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation just last week, making it the most valuable private AI company in the world and passing OpenAI for the first time.

Revenue run rate: $47 billion annualized, up from $10 billion twelve months ago. This is driven by Claude Code, which one unnamed firm reportedly spent $500 million on in a single month. Burn rate projected to fall to 9% of revenue in 2027. First profitable quarter expected Q2 2026, which is this quarter.

The Pentagon has designated Anthropic a supply chain risk after CEO Dario Amodei refused to give the military unrestricted access to its models. The dispute is working through two federal courts. For a company trying to IPO, pissing off the current administration is a bold move.

OpenAI — $852 billion (current), filing imminent
Still preparing its prospectus, ouch.

OpenAI is targeting a September listing with its revenue run rate at ~$24-25 billion. Projected to lose $17 billion in 2026. Not expected to reach positive cash flow before 2029-2030, by which point Anthropic will have been profitable for two years and will have sent Altman a very polite note about it.

CFO Sarah Friar has reportedly cautioned the company may not be ready for a 2026 listing. Sam Altman has been less cautious about timelines than his CFOs for the entirety of his professional career, which should tell you something.

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_{INDEX FUND EXTRAVAGANZA}

But Mom, What About My 401(k)?

For those of us who know that a 401(k) is a retirement plan and not the race the worst VP you know is trying to run, how these companies will play into index funds matters.

Index funds account for roughly 20% of the total US stock market holdings and ~62% of US households own index funds, so figuring out if these stocks that may or may not be overvalued are going to be dumped onto your lap in a few months is kind of an important question.

Starting with the big one - the S&P 500 dropped a definitive no.

S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed today it will not change its eligibility rules for any of the three.

To join the S&P 500, a company still needs 12 months of public trading, GAAP profitability in the most recent quarter and the preceding four, and a free float above 10%.

S&P’s statement: “exceptions to the financial viability, seasoning, and investable weight factor requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization.”

S&P really told Elon that size doesn’t actually matter.

The consequence is obvious: none of the $11.8 trillion in S&P 500 passive assets is forced to buy any of these companies for at least a year.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimated fast inclusion would have generated $14 billion in forced buying for SpaceX, $8 billion for OpenAI, and $4.6 billion for Anthropic. That demand has been deferred, not eliminated. Every passive S&P 500 investor got an accidental reprieve, unless they own QQQ.

The Nasdaq-100, on the other hand, said a very enthusiastic yes.

Nasdaq changed its rules in May. Any company in the top 40 by market cap can enter the Nasdaq-100 after just 15 trading days post-listing, with the prior free float requirement eliminated entirely.

SpaceX lists June 12. Fifteen trading days later is approximately July 7, which is when QQQ, QQQM, and the $1.4 trillion in Nasdaq-100 passive assets are mechanically forced to buy.

Here’s the problem. SpaceX’s float at IPO is only 3-5% of total shares, roughly $52-88 billion of stock actually tradeable in the market. But under the new Nasdaq methodology, a company with less than 20% free float is weighted at up to three times its actual float, capped at 15% of the index.

That means SpaceX could be weighted at 9-15% of the Nasdaq-100 despite having a float worth $88 billion at most, once again - mostly managed by Reddit.

QQQ alone manages $400 billion. The total Nasdaq-100 ecosystem is over $1.4 trillion. You are forcing hundreds of billions in passive buying into an $88 billion float. On day 15. With essentially no price discovery.

The closest analogue is Tesla’s S&P 500 inclusion in December 2020. Tesla ran 70% in the month before the inclusion date, then gave most of it back once the passive flow exhausted. SpaceX has a much smaller float and a much faster inclusion window. The front-run-and-exhaust pattern could be significantly more violent.

Add SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic to the Nasdaq-100 at target valuations. You’re adding roughly $3.57 trillion into an index worth $28-29 trillion — a 12% increase in total index market cap.

Three companies that combined are set to lose more than $25 billion in 2025.

Current Nasdaq-100 top 10: accounts for 47.45% of the index. Post-inclusion, that concentration figure almost certainly rises. Three unprofitable companies could represent 10-15% of the index your retirement account tracks.

The passive investing revolution was supposed to protect ordinary investors from speculative concentration. Nasdaq just decided that for the biggest companies, those protections don’t apply.

The S&P 500 held the line this morning. The Nasdaq did not.

If you hold QQQ or QQQM, you are about to own significant positions in SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Not because you chose to. Because Nasdaq changed its rules.