Big Tech's big IPOs
Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
4.5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 6 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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Some of the biggest names in tech are getting ready to go public. |
| 0:06.9 | From Marketplace, I'm Sabrina Bennisier in New York. |
| 0:09.7 | Elon Musk's SpaceX, which is somehow a rocket company and a social media company, but also an AI company, |
| 0:16.5 | filed for an initial public offering yesterday. |
| 0:19.2 | And the Wall Street Journal's reporting that OpenAI, |
| 0:21.8 | the maker of Chachapit, could file for an IPO as soon as tomorrow. Marketplace's Henry Up is here |
| 0:27.1 | with more. Hey, Henry. Hey, Sabree. So these companies have raised a lot of private capital over the years. |
| 0:32.9 | Why are they trying to go public now? Well, because they need even more money. The businesses they're in |
| 0:39.3 | artificial intelligence and space exploration require tons of capital. And right now, |
| 0:44.3 | there's still a lot of demand from investors for pretty much any company involved in artificial |
| 0:49.1 | intelligence. And so far, retail investors haven't had a chance to directly get a slice of these companies, which are some of the biggest names in AI. |
| 0:57.8 | So going public allows OpenAI and SpaceX and also Anthropic, which is considering an IPO as well, to tap into that investor demand and take in billions of dollars. |
| 1:07.8 | Part of going public means these companies will have to disclose more financial information, tell |
| 1:12.7 | investors more about how they are doing. SpaceX is the only one that has filed this kind of |
| 1:18.0 | information so far. What did we learn about the company yesterday? Well, for one, we learned just how much |
| 1:23.7 | money it's losing. To be clear, most of these companies that are aiming for IPOs are losing money right now, since they're spending so much to build out their systems. |
| 1:32.0 | But we got an exact number for SpaceX. It lost close to $5 billion last year, and it lost |
| 1:37.9 | over $4 billion just in the first quarter of this year. The one part of the business that is |
| 1:43.9 | profitable is Starlink, the company's satellite internet service. |
| 1:47.8 | We also learned just how much control Musk has over his company. |
| 1:51.2 | He controls 85% of the voting power in SpaceX. |
| 1:55.0 | And all of the shares he owns could make him the world's first trillionaire when SpaceX goes public. |
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