THE IRISH EQUITY market has been famously quiet in recent years.
Companies publicly list their shares for sale on the stock market in a process known as an IPO (initial public offering).
It’s a popular way for businesses to raise new finance. In return, investors buy shares in the business, hopefully seeing their value go up over time as the company expands.
The struggle of the Irish stock exchange to attract new IPOs has led to concerns about the long-term viability of the market.
In comparison, the US seems a completely different planet, as three companies are tipped for some of the biggest IPOs in history.
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are all expected to ‘go public’ in the coming months. OpenAI and Anthropic are perhaps the two best-known AI companies in the world, while SpaceX is also asking investors to value it primarily as an AI business.
To get a sense for how absolutely enormous these three deals are, it’s worth recognising that only one company in history has ever been valued at more than $1 trillion (€858.81 billion) at the time of its IPO.
That was Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s government-owned oil company. That is a business which is one of the most profitable in the world.
It has recorded profits of around $100 billion annually over several years, as it has significant control over arguably the world’s most important energy resource. Upon listing in 2019, it achieved a valuation of $1.7 trillion. No other company in history has come close.
The firm with the second-highest valuation at IPO was Chinese tech firm Alibaba, valued at $170 billion (10 times lower) back in 2014.
SpaceX is expected to finally set a new record, with it predicted to have a market value of about $1.75 trillion once it goes public.
OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to be valued at close to $1 trillion.
Having three companies reach such staggering valuations via IPO within such a short time of each other would be completely unprecedented.
The move reflects investor enthusiasm for AI technology, which many are betting will fuel a wave of once-unthinkable corporate profits.
It is likely that many Irish people will end up buying into these businesses in one way or another.
Many investment and pension funds track the US stock markets. With these three stocks set to be added, it’s likely that many Irish people will have part of their pensions tied to the value of these AI giants.
With that in mind, it is probably worth having some awareness of what these companies do, and why they’re valued so highly.
SpaceX
Founded by Elon Musk, SpaceX is an aerospace firm which designs and builds rockets, with the aim of making space travel cheaper.
Whoa there now. Space travel, aren’t we meant to be talking about AI companies?
That’s where the other part of SpaceX comes in. The firm also runs Starlink, a satellite internet system which uses thousands of satellites to provide internet services.
Starlink is actually the biggest driver of the company’s valuation. The division has about $12 billion in annual revenue, accounting for about two-thirds of SpaceX’s total sales of $18.7 billion.
The division has operating income of $4.42 billion and has a rapidly expanding user base, making it SpaceX’s main cash engine.
Starlink is using AI for its satellite network management, and the hope is that AI will massively boost its operations.
As a whole, SpaceX made a loss of almost $5 billion last year, burning through cash as it ploughs money into AI research.
The true AI-focused segment of the company only accounted for about 7% of SpaceX revenue last year.
The result has left many investors scratching their heads at the company’s enormous potential valuation.
Companies on the S&P 500, which comprises the biggest US companies, typically have market valuations of 3x – 4x their revenue.
With $18.7 billion in revenue, SpaceX’s potential valuation would be almost 100 times its revenue, fuelling fears that the company could be overhyped.
OpenAI
Founded in 2015, OpenAI began its life as a non-profit with the lofty goal that AI would “benefit all of humanity”.
The firm is best-known for ChatGPT, an LLM (large language model) which almost everyone and their granny has tried using.
The model can write articles, emails, translate, summarise documents, and so on.
OpenAI has long since strayed from its charitable roots, making money by charging subscription fees for its services.
It’s on track to record about $30 billion worth of revenue in 2026. However, the firm is currently wracking up enormous losses, and is projected to lose $14 billion this year, as it spends billions on research and expensive computer infrastructure.
While it has 900 million users, only about 5% of them are paying customers.
But that enormous user base is also why the company could be valued at $1 trillion. Investors are betting that the firm will become the ‘default global AI platform’ and make enormous profits in the future.
It’s similar to social media giants. Facebook (now Meta) was unprofitable for about five years after launch. It recorded net income of $60 billion for 2025 and has a $1.6 trillion valuation, as it has a leading position in its market.
While many backers hope OpenAI will be a similar story, there are some worries that it could be overtaken by the likes of Anthropic.
Anthropic
Started in 2021 by former researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic has now grown to become one of the company’s main rivals.
It also builds LLMs, best-known for its AI assistant Claude, which provides similar services to ChatGPT.
One of the big selling points for the business is that it has focused on making AI systems safer and more controllable – disagreements over this were part of the reason why the founding research team left OpenAI in the first place.
It has had a head-spinning growth in revenue. For such quickly-growing companies, many investors look at ‘revenue run rate’. That is, projects what a company will make over an entire year by taking its current revenue and multiplying it.
Last year, its ‘revenue run rate’ was $10 billion. Earlier in 2026, it was $30 billion. It was most recently reported at $47 billion.
This has been accompanied by a dizzying rise in Anthropic’s valuation. In February, the company was valued at approximately $380 billion. During the week it raised $65 billion at a market cap of $965 billion – almost tripling its value in just a few months. Notably, it also put its valuation above OpenAI’s.
Many analysts now predict it will IPO later this year, and some think that it could be best-placed to be the winner of the AI arms race.
The firm is already reported to be making an operating profit (although it is still pouring cash into R&D), while its new Mythos model has got the attention of the global finance industry.