SpaceX Just Became the Most Valuable Post-IPO Company Ever

SpaceX began trading publicly on June 12th with a post-IPO valuation of $1.77 trillion, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $1.7 trillion to become the most valuable post-IPO company in history. SpaceX is on track to raise $75 billion from the offering, more than doubling Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion raise and far exceeding other large IPOs including Alibaba at $21 billion and SoftBank at $21.4 billion. Retail investors submitted $100 billion in orders, and BlackRock alone placed a $5 billion order, a figure that nearly matches the $5.55 billion Cerebrus generated from its entire IPO. Elon Musk is expected to become the world's first trillionaire once the IPO trade closes.

SpaceX pre-IPO shares on Hyperliquid normalized just above the $135 initial list price, meaning retail investors who entered the pre-IPO market on crypto rails between October and January were the only ones who captured a meaningful price advantage. This outcome illustrates a broader caveat about pre-IPO crypto instruments: generating real returns requires months of lead time before the offering.

On Hyperliquid, OpenAI pre-IPO shares fell from a peak of $2,000 in early May to $1,200, implying a market cap of $1.24 trillion, while Anthropic pre-IPO shares fell from $963 two weeks ago to $705, implying a market cap of $1.57 trillion, paradoxically higher than OpenAI's implied valuation. Both declines were attributed to rotation into SpaceX rather than any fundamental deterioration at either company. Anthropic's pre-stock price did not respond positively to the company's recent release of a product called Fable. The Anthropic market remains small at roughly 8,000 to 9,000 active trading addresses, compared to nearly 12,000 for SpaceX pre-stock and just over 4,000 for OpenAI.

Nakamoto, the Bitcoin treasury company named after Satoshi Nakamoto, sold approximately 600 Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related derivative positions, generating around $48 million in net proceeds, and used those funds to retire $45 million in outstanding debt through repayment of a loan with Pay World Interactive doing business as Kraken. The notable irony is that a company named after Satoshi, who never sold Bitcoin, was compelled to sell Bitcoin to stabilize its balance sheet. Nakamoto shares initially rose roughly 20 percent on the news before giving back about half those gains, sinking 8.5 percent in pre-market trading.

Bitmine, Tom Lee's Ethereum treasury company, holds over 5.5 million ETH representing approximately 4.59 percent of circulating supply, valued at around $9 billion, and is accumulating between 150,000 and 350,000 ETH per month, having added nearly 500,000 ETH in December alone. Bitmine has deployed $19.3 billion to buy ETH over the past year compared to Strategy's $21.2 billion deployed to buy Bitcoin over the same period, and Bitmine's percentage of circulating ETH supply has already surpassed Strategy's equivalent percentage of Bitcoin supply while accelerating faster. Despite this pace, Bitmine stock is down 47 percent year to date and the ETH to BTC ratio is down 22 percent year to date. Tom Lee has stated a target of 5 percent of ETH supply, and it remains unclear whether accumulation will continue past that benchmark.

DraftKings reported $1.3 billion in trading volume on its prediction markets and its stock was rising sharply, with the suggestion that DraftKings is likely pulling volume away from Polymarket and Koushi for sports events. Sports betting accounts for 30 percent of total trailing volume on Koushi and 80 percent of Polymarket volume since July 2024, though the NBA Finals did not appear to be driving significant volume on either platform. World Cup open interest is growing faster than NBA Finals open interest on both Polymarket and Koushi, and the Polymarket World Cup winner market currently shows approximately $25 million in open interest, well below the levels generated by the Trump election market. Politics remains a stronger draw than sports on Polymarket. The broader caution offered is that traditional finance companies entering crypto trading could create similar competitive headwinds for exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase, and that prediction market competition should not be extrapolated directly to crypto exchange growth.