Tech titans prepare for blockbuster IPOs in new front of AI race

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Tech titans prepare for blockbuster IPOs in new front of AI race

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by Julia Shapero - 05/26/26 6:00 AM ET

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by Julia Shapero - 05/26/26 6:00 AM ET

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Three of the world’s leading AI companies are racing to go public, opening yet another front in the high stakes competition over the technology.

SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are all expected to make their stock market debut with hefty valuations, as investors are eager to get in on the companies at the heart of the AI boom that have previously been locked up in private markets.

It marks the latest stage in the AI race that shows no sign of slowing, as Elon Musk’s rocket company and the two AI upstarts seek to join more well-established tech giants on public markets and gain access to additional funding — a key benefit for companies seeking vast amounts of costly computing power.

“These companies need money,” David Foster, a clinical professor of finance at the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business, told The Hill.

“They’re all trying to build out AI infrastructure, their servers, their data centers, power centers, all that stuff. They’re all trying to build all that stuff out at once, so it’s big dollars,” he said.

But as private companies, “they just don’t have the resources to be able to spend that money,” Foster added. “So that’s one of the biggest issues, is they have to come public to go after big equity dollars to be able to spend the money just to keep up with the race.”

SpaceX is the first on deck. The company, which merged with Musk’s xAI earlier this year, has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) and is reportedly eyeing a record-breaking $1.75 trillion valuation and a mid-June debut.

On Wednesday, it publicly filed its preliminary prospectus, offering investors the first glimpse into the firm’s underlying finances.

The document shows SpaceX posted a $4.28 billion loss in the first three months of 2026, despite raking in $4.69 billion in revenue. For the full year in 2025, the company brought in $18.67 billion but ultimately faced a loss of $4.94 billion.

SpaceX, which was founded in 2002, has made a name for itself as a leading rocket launch provider and a satellite internet provider via its Starlink business. But with the xAI merger, Musk has sought to shift the company into an AI play as well, pointing to the prospect of data centers in space.

“I think a lot of people look at it still as more of a traditional aerospace type company, and it’s really trying to be at the center of AI infrastructure, aerospace, exploration,” Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence for the supply chain services firm Circular Technology, told The Hill.

The company has directed a significant portion of its capital expenditures toward AI, spending $7.72 billion on the segment just in the first quarter of 2026. By comparison, it invested $1.05 billion in its space segment and $1.33 billion in its connectivity segment, which contains Starlink.

SpaceX’s heavy capital spending on AI isn’t entirely unique. As of late April, Bank of America analysts estimated that total AI capital expenditures could reach $800 billion in 2026 and top $1 trillion in 2027.

Tech companies are investing eye-popping sums to build out AI infrastructure, namely data centers, to provide the computing capacity needed to continue developing and running new models.

OpenAI has reportedly told investors that it plans to spend $600 billion on compute by 2030. Anthropic has reached a series of deals over the past two months to boost its computing capacity. This includes a deal with SpaceX for which it will pay $1.25 billion a month through 2029, according to Wednesday’s filing.

“The amount of money that these companies are spending on AI infrastructure and what’s needed is just so, so large,” Gastwirth said, adding, “The availability and the ease of getting that substantial amount of liquidity, the easiest way to do that at this scale is from an IPO.”

OpenAI appears poised to be the next AI darling to make a move, fast on the heels of SpaceX. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the ChatGPT maker is preparing to file for an IPO in the coming days and weeks, with an eye toward a September debut.

The company is “one of the rare private companies whose products are already used daily by hundreds of millions of users,” Minmo Gahng, assistant professor of finance at Cornell University, noted in a statement.

It became a household name following the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. This recognition could generate “substantial retail demand,” Gahng said.

“But the same growth story requires enormous capital spending,” he added. “Competition from Anthr