Big Tech's big IPOs
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Some of the biggest names in tech are making moves to go public this week. SpaceX — Elon Musk’s rocket, social media, and AI company — filed for an initial public offering yesterday. And the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, could file for an IPO as soon as tomorrow. These companies have raised a lot of private capital over the years. Why go public now? Plus, the pharmaceutical industry is investing billions in finding exotic radioactive isotopes to treat cancers.
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| 0:31.0 | Some of the biggest names in tech are getting ready to go public. From Marketplace, I'm Sabrina Beneshore in New York. |
| 0:39.7 | Elon Musk's SpaceX, which is somehow a rocket company and a social media company, |
| 0:44.8 | but also an AI company, filed for an initial public offering yesterday. |
| 0:49.2 | And the Wall Street Journal's reporting that OpenAI, the maker of Chachapit, |
| 0:53.2 | could file for an IPO as soon as |
| 0:54.6 | tomorrow. Marketplace's Henry Ep is here with more. Hey, Henry. Hey, Sabree. So these companies have |
| 1:00.4 | raised a lot of private capital over the years. Why are they trying to go public now? |
| 1:05.8 | Well, because they need even more money. The businesses, they're in artificial intelligence |
| 1:10.3 | and space exploration require |
| 1:12.3 | tons of capital. And right now, there's still a lot of demand from investors for pretty much |
| 1:17.2 | any company involved in artificial intelligence. And so far, retail investors haven't had a chance |
| 1:22.8 | to directly get a slice of these companies, which are some of the biggest names in AI. So going public allows |
| 1:28.9 | OpenAI and SpaceX and also Anthropic, which is considering an IPO as well, to tap into that |
| 1:34.8 | investor demand and take in billions of dollars. Part of going public means these companies will |
| 1:39.9 | have to disclose more financial information, tell investors more about how they are doing. SpaceX is the |
| 1:46.2 | only one that has filed this kind of information so far. What did we learn about the company yesterday? |
| 1:52.3 | Well, for one, we learned just how much money it's losing. To be clear, most of these companies |
| 1:56.1 | that are aiming for IPOs are losing money right now, since they're spending so much to build out their systems. |
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