Key Points
Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, generated plenty of hype with its initial public offering (IPO), although some of that is wearing off now. Still, it was a major event that created lots of interest in its stock and others. I haven’t purchased any SpaceX shares, and don’t intend to anytime soon.
However, there’s another IPO coming that could be far more lucrative than SpaceX, and I think it offers better long-term upside. What’s next? It’s likely Anthropic.
Anthropic looks like a far better deal than SpaceX
Anthropic creates large language models, with Claude being its flagship model. It’s typically recognized as one of the major independent artificial intelligence (AI) companies, with the other being OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT. These are some intriguing businesses, and with Anthropic seemingly winning the battle for the most powerful AI model right now, it is starting to gather huge investor interest.
On June 1, Anthropic made a confidential IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fact that it filed this is public information, but the information pertaining to the company isn’t public yet.
This is the same process that SpaceX used to go public, and it doesn’t take long. SpaceX filed its confidential IPO on April 1 and went public two and a half months after that. If Anthropic follows a similar time frame, we could see its IPO occur in early fall.
I’m excited for this, as Anthropic has a lot going for it. At the end of May, it finished a funding round that valued the company at $965 billion, so it will likely go public at a greater than $1 trillion valuation.
The company also reported that its annual run rate crossed $47 billion during that time. For reference, SpaceX’s revenue during 2025 was just over $20 billion. So, Anthropic is generating far more revenue than SpaceX, and is currently valued at about half of its size.
If that holds into its IPO, then it seems like a brilliant stock to buy when it eventually starts trading on the public markets, especially instead of SpaceX. We’ll learn a lot more about Anthropic in the coming months, but until then, the best way to invest in it is by purchasing shares of Amazon or Alphabet, since both of them are significant investments in their own right and also own a significant share of Anthropic.
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Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet and Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
