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SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 today: $4.3B in play

SpaceX finishes its first month public by joining the Nasdaq-100 this morning, with a reported ~$4.3 billion of index buying meeting a float of roughly 4%. OpenAI, a week after reports of a 2027 IPO timeline, has reportedly proposed handing 5% of its equity to a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. And Mercor reportedly doubled its gross revenue run rate in two months.

Paul Smalera

Synthetic SpaceX: trading a press release

Jun 18, 2026

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7 min read

Synthetic SpaceX: trading a press release

Five venues launched SpaceX perps days before the IPO, on institutional-looking terms. So who actually ends up holding them?

Paul Smalera

Anthropic got 90 minutes. Top models went dark.

Jun 16, 2026

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5 min read

Anthropic got 90 minutes. Top models went dark.

Anthropic — which filed confidentially for an IPO two weeks ago — got 90 minutes' notice late last week before a U.S. export order pulled its two most capable models offline, and by Monday more than 80 cybersecurity leaders were publicly asking the White House to reverse it. Meanwhile SpaceX finished its debut at a different altitude: up another 19.6% Monday, a market value above $2.5 trillion, and a raise that grew to $85.7 billion after underwriters exercised the greenshoe.

Paul Smalera

Bezos raises $12B; Citi tokenizes private shares; SpaceX IPOs

Jun 12, 2026

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7 min read

Bezos raises $12B; Citi tokenizes private shares; SpaceX IPOs

SpaceX priced the largest IPO on record Thursday night and began trading on Nasdaq today — Thursday's Deep Dive, updated with the pricing, covers what its exit means for the private tape. Other highlights: Jeff Bezos' Prometheus closed a $12 billion Series B at a reported $41 billion valuation, Citigroup said it will offer tokenized shares of private companies to wealthy clients, and KKR launched a $10 billion AI-infrastructure financier. Capital moved at IPO scale all week. Most of it without a ticker.

Paul Smalera

Jun 11, 2026

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6 min read

SpaceX exits. Who inherits the tape?

SpaceX priced its record IPO at a reported $135 — and its exit sharpens a question for private-share holders. Secondaries hit a reported $106B in 2025, but the top 20 names were ~86% of it and just 70 new names traded all year. De-concentration is a forecast; concentration is a fact.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX's $135 mark meets the public tape

Jun 9, 2026

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5 min read

SpaceX's $135 mark meets the public tape

SpaceX has been among the most-traded names on every secondary platform, is set to price Thursday and list Friday — which means the private market is about to lose its most visible and liquid private-company reference point, and the open question is where that demand goes. The timing isn't isolated: with OpenAI confirming its own confidential S-1 on June 8, all three names that anchored private-market demand are now in the IPO pipeline at once. Ramp's fresh $750M round at $44B resets the reference price for one of the other heavily traded private names, and on Forge, SpaceX's secondary mark is now sitting a few dollars under its $135 offer price — the cleanest test yet of whether a private mark survives contact with the public tape.

Paul Smalera

Jun 5, 2026

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8 min read

SpaceX: a $1.77T ask, a $780B dissent

SpaceX set its IPO price at $135 a share — a fixed price, not a range — implying a $1.77 trillion valuation, and Morningstar answered with a published fair-value estimate of $780 billion. Washington, meanwhile, has reportedly held preliminary talks about the federal government taking equity stakes in AI companies, an idea Sam Altman has pitched directly to the President. And Quantinuum delivered the new IPO pipeline's first finished data point: priced above range, closed roughly where it priced.

Paul Smalera

Anthropic's S-1: Reconstructed From the Record*

Jun 4, 2026

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6 min read

Anthropic's S-1: Reconstructed From the Record*

Anthropic confirmed Monday it submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the SEC — no share count, price range, or timeline set. The filing is sealed, but the public record around it is unusually deep, so today we reconstruct it: $4.8 billion in reported Q1 revenue and a reportedly projected first operating profit in Q2; a reported $1.25 billion-per-month xAI compute contract that surfaced in SpaceX's filing rather than Anthropic's; a $100 billion-plus AWS commitment; a reported ~$36 billion off-balance-sheet chip lease in syndication; and a governance structure — five financially disinterested trustees who ultimately elect a board majority — with no precedent at this scale. We lay out what's on the record and mark what only the filing can answer.

Paul Smalera

Jun 2, 2026

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5 min read

SpaceX could hit your 401(k) in 5 days*

SpaceX is scheduled to open its IPO roadshow on June 4 — reportedly targeting as much as a $1.75 trillion valuation and a ~$75 billion raise, with pricing reported for June 11 — and index providers have cleared a fast lane that could pull it into 401(k)s and ETFs within days of listing. The repricing is spreading beyond AI and space — defense-tech maker Mach Industries raised at a reported $1.8 billion, nearly 4x its mark a year ago. Underneath the trophy names, PitchBook counts 220+ "fallen unicorns" — a reminder the same boom lifting the top is freezing the middle.

Paul Smalera

May 29, 2026

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7 min read

Anthropic's reported $965B tops OpenAI

Anthropic closed a reported $65 billion Series H this week at a $965 billion post-money valuation, nudging past the $852 billion mark OpenAI set in its March round and reordering the top of the AI-lab table. Apollo and Blackstone are reportedly shopping a roughly $36 billion private-credit deal to buy Google chips that Anthropic would lease. The quieter story is defense AI absorbing nearly half of all venture dollars in a single recent week.

Paul Smalera

OpenAI's $6.6B Tender: Comp, Not Cash Out

May 28, 2026

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7 min read

OpenAI's $6.6B Tender: Comp, Not Cash Out

OpenAI's $6.6 billion employee tender — the largest private-company tender on record — closed in October at a reported valuation around $500 billion. The per-employee mechanics surfaced this month: more than 600 current and former employees reportedly participated, with about 75 of them clearing a $30 million per-employee cap. Stripe ran another tender in February at a reported $159 billion. Anthropic completed one in April at $350 billion. Decagon, less than three years old, ran its first in March at $4.5 billion. Thursday Thesis: how the tender offer has become a compensation instrument — and what that may mean for how late-stage equity gets paid.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX filing unveiled; IPO pipeline comes into focus

May 22, 2026

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8 min read

SpaceX filing unveiled; IPO pipeline comes into focus

Three S-1 filings landed inside roughly 72 hours this week — SpaceX publicly, with Oura and Blockchain.com both filing confidentially the same day. A fourth, OpenAI, is reportedly preparing a confidential filing imminently. Separately, Anthropic told investors it expects its first operating profit this quarter on $10.9 billion in revenue — a number that resets the AI-lab comp set.

Paul Smalera

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SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 today: $4.3B in play

Synthetic SpaceX: trading a press release

Anthropic got 90 minutes. Top models went dark.

Bezos raises $12B; Citi tokenizes private shares; SpaceX IPOs

SpaceX exits. Who inherits the tape?

SpaceX's $135 mark meets the public tape

SpaceX: a $1.77T ask, a $780B dissent

Anthropic's S-1: Reconstructed From the Record*

SpaceX could hit your 401(k) in 5 days*

Anthropic's reported $965B tops OpenAI

OpenAI's $6.6B Tender: Comp, Not Cash Out

SpaceX filing unveiled; IPO pipeline comes into focus

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