SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs eclipse 25 years of US tech exits
A trio of upcoming US listings led by SpaceX is set to create more value than all American venture-backed exits since 2000 combined, highlighting a stark wealth generation gap that leaves European markets on the sidelines.
SpaceX has debuted on public markets at a $1.77 trillion valuation, with Anthropic and OpenAI expected to follow. According to Wednesday’s NCVA-Pitchbook Venture Monitor report, these three exits combined will "generate more value than all U.S. VC-backed exits since 2000."
The projected scale of this trio is staggering. Anthropic and OpenAI are both pushing into the trillions, placing the group's combined valuation north of $4 trillion. To put this in perspective, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission counted just $70 billion in total U.S.-based IPO proceeds last year.
The Pitchbook figure measures "value created" rather than strictly liquid cash, and excludes non-U.S. companies like Alibaba. It also ignores product milestones achieved at already-public firms, such as the iPhone, the debut of Android, or the launches of YouTube and Instagram. Yet the trio still eclipses a generation of landmark deals. The past 25 years saw the public debuts of Google, Tesla, and Meta, alongside acquisitions of LinkedIn, Slack, and WhatsApp for more than $20 billion each. Uber’s $84 billion float in 2019 seemed massive at the time, but it represents less than 5% of SpaceX’s current valuation alone.
Two structural shifts explain this extreme concentration of wealth. Startups are staying private much longer, meaning a modern equivalent of early-2000s Google would likely delay its listing to extract a higher price. Additionally, the capital-intensive nature of AI model training has forced labs into intense fundraising cycles, heavily inflating their private valuations.
For European investors and policymakers, this rapid consolidation of value across three American firms underscores a deepening transatlantic economic divide. As European exchanges struggle to retain or attract homegrown tech champions, U.S. capital markets are tightening their grip on the world's most strategic industries. The sheer size of these incoming listings is pushing financial infrastructure to its limits. Consequently, the vast majority of the financial returns from the AI and space revolutions are set to bypass European markets, leaving local institutional investors to decide whether to sit out or buy in at historically elevated prices.
