Key Points
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Investors are getting wary of AI spending sprees, which may be hurting SpaceX stock right now.
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OpenAI has reportedly considered waiting to go public after seeing SpaceX’s share price volatility.
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Most large companies that go public experience significant share price swings, and usually gain only about 3.5% in the 12 months after their IPO.
- 10 stocks we like better than Space Exploration Technologies ›
OpenAI is reportedly considering delaying its IPO until sometime next year. The company has already filed the preliminary paperwork to go public, so the potential delay is a bit of a disappointment to investors who are waiting to invest in the AI juggernaut.
The New York Times reported that advisors to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are telling him that the recent volatility in Space Exploration Technologies‘ (NASDAQ: SPCX) IPO indicates that now is not a good time for AI companies to go public.
SpaceX stock, after opening at $150 per share on its IPO debut and rising as high as $225 a few days later, is now back down to around $156, as of this writing. Cerebras, another recent IPO by an AI company, also experienced a huge spike on its IPO day, only to see its shares remain volatile in the following weeks.
Investors are indeed concerned that AI companies are spending too much on infrastructure, with hopes of future profits too far down the road.
But OpenAI may be missing the bigger picture: IPOs tend to be highly volatile regardless of the market environment.
OpenAI is trying to avoid SpaceX’s volatility
OpenAI and SpaceX may seem like very different companies, but there’s actually a fair amount of overlap between the two. SpaceX owns the Grok AI chatbot and recently made a major $60 billion purchase of Cursor, giving it AI software for programming to better compete with ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
SpaceX is also building extensive AI infrastructure for its neocloud business, renting out high-powered processors to AI companies such as Anthropic, Alphabet‘s Google, and others.
Why does this matter in the context of an OpenAI IPO? Both SpaceX and OpenAI are burning through piles of cash to expand their AI services at a time when investors are starting to doubt companies will see a return on their spending.
SpaceX’s 2025 capital expenditures totaled $20.7 billion and are likely to be higher this year, given that Q1 2026 spending was already $10 billion. The company also reported a net loss of nearly $5 billion last year and doesn’t expect to be profitable for at least several years.
OpenAI’s detailed financial information isn’t publicly available yet, since the company’s S-1 filing hasn’t been filed, but investors can get a good idea of the company’s spending from estimates — and there’s a lot of it.
OpenAI had an operating loss of nearly $21 billion last year and spent about $34 billion. The company has just over $13 billion in revenue for 2025, and says it has an annual revenue run rate of $20 billion.
The point here is that, like SpaceX, OpenAI is spending oodles of dollars to build out its AI empire, and profits aren’t close.
The company reportedly aims to reach a $1 trillion valuation when it goes public and to avoid the volatility SpaceX stock has seen thus far. But that’s easier said than done, even if SpaceX waits until next year to go public.
The one thing OpenAI advisors are missing
IPOs are inherently volatile, and larger ones can be especially so. Research from Jefferies analysts shows that companies worth $10 billion or more that went public over the past 26 years averaged 26.5% returns in their first week.
Pretty good, right? Except that one year later, they were up by an average of just 3.5%.
Ouch.
The lesson here is that expecting a mega IPO to perform exceptionally well over the next year, even with all of the AI hype that’s currently underway, is statistically unlikely, which means that whenever investors can get their hands on some OpenAI shares, they should be prepared for a roller-coaster ride.
That doesn’t mean OpenAI shares won’t be a good long-term investment, or that SpaceX can’t be, for that matter, either. But if you’re interested in either stock, it’s best to wait about a year before buying.
And with investors unlikely to look the other way on the AI spending sprees underway, I expect much more share price volatility in this space ahead.
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Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Jefferies Financial Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
