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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

$725B in capex. The math behind the datacenter buildout.

May 21, 2026

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7 min read

$725B in capex. The math behind the datacenter buildout.

In the last two weeks, NextEra agreed to buy Dominion Energy for $67 billion to feed data center power demand. Anthropic signed a deal to pay xAI $1.25 billion per month for compute. CoreWeave doubled Q1 revenue but carries $25 billion in debt at 11% interest. And the hyperscalers collectively guided to $725 billion in 2026 capex. Everyone is building as fast as they can — but the demand forecasts justifying all of it rest on assumptions that Goldman Sachs says can swing by hundreds of billions with a single variable change. Today's thesis: the data center capex chain, who's exposed, and what breaks if the projections are wrong.

Paul Smalera

Musk lost in 2 hours. OpenAI litigation overhang eases; appeal and IPO timing still in focus

May 19, 2026

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4 min read

Musk lost in 2 hours. OpenAI litigation overhang eases; appeal and IPO timing still in focus

A federal jury rejected every claim in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI in under two hours yesterday, removing the most-cited overhang on the company's IPO timeline. Separately, Anthropic acquired Stainless for a reported $300M+ — the SDK-generation startup whose tooling runs inside OpenAI, Google, and Cloudflare. The frontier labs at scale are now M&A buyers.

Paul Smalera

May 15, 2026

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4 min read

Cerebras popped 108%

Cerebras printed the first true blockbuster tech IPO of 2026 — a 108% first-day pop on a $5.5B raise — and the calendar behind it tells the story of the week. Anthropic is in talks for $30B at a $900B valuation, doubling its February mark. Anduril doubled to $61B in five months. The private market is repricing its top names faster than the IPO window can absorb them.

Paul Smalera

Anduril at $61B and defense tech's 2026 reset

May 14, 2026

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5 min read

Anduril at $61B and defense tech's 2026 reset

Wednesday's $5B Anduril round doubled the company in eleven months and capped a record quarter for defense-tech venture funding. The revenue underneath the category looks nothing like what's funding the AI labs, and the difference is starting to matter.

Paul Smalera

Hackers shipped AI's first working zero-day

May 12, 2026

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6 min read

Hackers shipped AI's first working zero-day

Google's Threat Intelligence Group published evidence Monday of the first documented case of criminals using AI to discover and weaponize a zero-day exploit — a two-factor authentication bypass in a popular open-source admin tool. Google says it disrupted the campaign before it scaled. Cerebras raised its IPO range again ahead of pricing Wednesday night, with the offering now teed up at a basic-share market cap of $34.4B (fully diluted closer to $49B) and a book reportedly more than 20 times oversubscribed.

Paul Smalera

May 8, 2026

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6 min read

Ramp $40B. Hyperscalers' $49B tell.

Ramp is reportedly raising at a $40B+ valuation — a 25% jump in six months. Goldman Sachs flagged this week that roughly 60% of Alphabet's and Amazon's Q1 "other income," about $49B combined, came from gains on private-company equity stakes. Anthropic's CEO put Q1 growth at 80x annualized. The private market isn't just adjacent to the public one anymore. It's showing up in the earnings reports.

Paul Smalera

Anthropic's tender priced at $350B. The market said $1T.

May 7, 2026

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8 min read

Anthropic's tender priced at $350B. The market said $1T.

A month after the tender closed, the Forge mark is at $1T. What that gap tells us about how private markets actually price.

Paul Smalera

May 5, 2026

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6 min read

Anthropic's $1.5B JV with Blackstone

Anthropic and OpenAI each launched a separately capitalized deployment vehicle in the same news cycle Monday — Anthropic's $1.5B JV with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman to push Claude into mid-market enterprises, and OpenAI's $4B+ raise at a $10B pre-money for a new venture called The Deployment Company. Cerebras filed updated IPO terms with a $115–$125 range and a $26.6B fully-diluted mark, and Anthropic's separate $50B primary round at a $900B valuation could close within two weeks.

Paul Smalera

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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

$725B in capex. The math behind the datacenter buildout.

Musk lost in 2 hours. OpenAI litigation overhang eases; appeal and IPO timing still in focus

Cerebras popped 108%

Anduril at $61B and defense tech's 2026 reset

Hackers shipped AI's first working zero-day

Ramp $40B. Hyperscalers' $49B tell.

Anthropic's tender priced at $350B. The market said $1T.

Anthropic's $1.5B JV with Blackstone

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