Author: Nancy, PANews

An epic year for US IPOs is rapidly unfolding. SpaceX has reportedly secretly filed for an IPO, aiming for a potential valuation of up to $1.75 trillion, potentially setting a record for the world's largest IPO.

At the same time, with star unicorns such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic accelerating their rush to the capital market, and Nasdaq about to open up liquidity channels, the IPO market is entering an unprecedented period of diversion.

SpaceX is aiming for the largest IPO in history, with retail investors potentially receiving up to 30% of the allocation.

In 2019, Saudi Aramco, the world’s most wealthy oil company, went public with a total of approximately $29.4 billion in funding and a valuation of $1.7 trillion. This not only set a record for the world’s largest IPO at the time, but also made it one of the most valuable listed companies in history.

Six years later, SpaceX is trying to break this record.

According to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, SpaceX has secretly filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), targeting a valuation of over $1.75 trillion. If all goes smoothly, SpaceX could debut on the capital markets this June, becoming a strong contender for the largest IPO in history and the first of the three major tech giants to achieve such a massive IPO.

Behind this aggressive pricing lies not only its monopolistic position in space infrastructure, but also the spillover effect of the AI narrative. In February of this year, SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI, bringing the combined valuation to $1.25 trillion.

Sources familiar with the matter say SpaceX's IPO could raise as much as $75 billion, a further increase from the previous expectation of $50 billion. According to a Reuters report, SpaceX's Project Apex has invited 21 investment banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, to participate in the underwriting process, handling global distribution, order collection, pricing coordination, and transaction execution. This impressive underwriting syndicate is essentially designed to distribute the burden across individual institutions, improve cross-regional distribution efficiency, and reduce overall issuance risk.

Unlike traditional IPOs, Musk is designing an unconventional allocation mechanism. In addition to some early investors potentially facing a lock-up period of more than six months, the allocation to retail investors without lock-up restrictions has been increased to 30%, far exceeding the usual 5% to 10%, breaking with Wall Street norms.

This change has been interpreted by the market as indicating that institutional investors' ability to absorb such high valuations and massive funding has a certain limit. Meanwhile, Musk's massive global fan base, coupled with SpaceX's dominant position and Tesla's success story, gives him a strong ability to mobilize retail investors. Once retail investors are involved, they not only become a supplementary source of funding but also help stabilize the stock price after the IPO, reducing short-term selling pressure.

In fact, the market's ability to absorb high valuations has already shown signs of fatigue.

Recently, OpenAI, which just completed a large-scale financing round, has seen a significant cooling in the secondary market. Some investors attempted to sell approximately $600 million worth of shares at a discount, but almost no one was willing to take them on. This is a stark contrast to the frenzied buying spree last year, and the fundamental reason lies in the market's concerns about high valuations, high cash burn rates, and unclear profit paths.

The same doubts may be amplified when it comes to SpaceX.

Unicorns line up to ring the bell, Nasdaq makes major rule changes

The US IPO market is entering a supercycle in 2026.

Besides SpaceX, a number of heavyweight unicorns, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks, are queuing up to ring the bell, making the IPO window extremely crowded.

In response to this wave of IPOs, Nasdaq recently adjusted the inclusion rules for the Nasdaq 100 index, announcing two key changes: first, the removal of the 10% minimum free float threshold; and second, the introduction of the "Fast Track Nasdaq 100" which allows large-cap IPO companies to be included in the Nasdaq 100 index within 15 trading days.

The new rule will take effect on May 1 this year, one month before SpaceX plans to go public.

Previously, large IPO companies with insufficient free float could not be included in the Nasdaq 100 index, and even if they met the criteria, they had to wait for a several-month observation period or even the annual adjustment window in December. Before Nasdaq gave the green light, SpaceX had clearly expressed its preference for listing on Nasdaq and proposed that its inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 as soon as possible be a condition for inclusion.

In terms of timing and mechanism, this round of rule relaxation can almost be seen as tailor-made for large-cap companies like SpaceX. It will directly reshape the path of capital allocation, making it easier for passive funds (ETFs, index funds) to allocate to these new stocks more quickly, improving liquidity in the early stages of listing, and increasing market recognition.

However, this mechanism has also been pointed out that it will provide a quick exit for early major shareholders, while ordinary investors will be passively exposed to more immature risks.

The IPO window is closing, and crypto institutions are temporarily halting their entry.

But the more realistic problem is that although the window has opened, funds, valuations, and attention are being rapidly consumed and diverted.

The US IPO market is currently in a seasonal lull, and coupled with stock market volatility and a wave of listing delays, investor confidence has clearly weakened.

According to Bloomberg, although the U.S. IPO market performed well in the first quarter of this year, the performance of most IPO transactions was unsatisfactory due to global economic instability. Seven of the top ten IPOs in the quarter have now fallen below their issue price, with a median decline of 28%.

Meanwhile, with increasing global uncertainty, especially the outbreak of the war with Iran, many companies have postponed their plans to list on the US stock market, making March one of the quietest IPO months in nearly a year.

Many crypto companies have also chosen to postpone their US IPO plans, including OKX, Ledger, Kraken, and Bithumb, all delaying their IPOs to varying degrees. This is due to both the cyclical downturn and profitability uncertainty within the crypto industry itself, as well as fluctuations in the macroeconomic environment and a contraction in capital risk appetite.

More importantly, many of the highly valued AI and space giants in this round of IPOs are not growth companies with strong profit elasticity, but rather have prematurely priced in unproven growth expectations. When these companies go public in a concentrated manner, they may not only continue to drain market liquidity in the short term, but also compress the listing window and valuation space of other companies.

Starting May 1st, Nasdaq will remove the 10% minimum free float requirement and introduce a new "fast track" rule.

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