SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO, OpenAI Files to Go Public, Uber Cuts
The 20VC trio (Harry Stebbings, Jason Calacanis, Howie Lerner and Rory O'Driscoll) trade the week the IPO window blew wide open. The headline: **SpaceX begins a $75bn IPO roadshow at a ~$1.77-1.8 trillion valuation, with Elon fixing the price (~$135/share) himself rather than letting bankers run price discovery.** With the book only ~2x covered (versus the traditional 8-10x bankers want for a clean pop), the panel is split: Calacanis thinks a fixed price plus thin coverage means it pops, while Rory argues short-circuiting price discovery raises the probability it breaks issue, and that **fundamental value reasserts over 12 months — this 'amazing company' may settle nearer $1tn than $1.7tn, still a generational win.** Ontario Teachers (mistaken for Ohio on-air) and savvy endowments are flagged as the biggest co-investment winners ever; the worry is LPs extrapolating a once-a-decade event into a new bar that kills sub-$8bn outcomes. **OpenAI's filing to go public is read as expectations management, not commitment** — everyone is suddenly gunning for the public-capital door because frontier-model capital needs are 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than anything else (last private rounds: OpenAI $122bn, Anthropic $30bn). On the AI-infra money path, the panel's sharpest take is on **Elon turning xAI's data-centre overbuild into ~$2bn/month (~$24bn/yr) of compute revenue — $1.25bn from Google, $950m from Anthropic — making him 'the most efficient CoreWeave with the lowest cost of capital,' with the Cursor acquisition backfilling servers at ~10x forward revenue.** Other threads: Apple paying Google ~$1bn to power Siri (vs the ~$20bn Google pays Apple for default search) is judged pragmatic, not surrender; Uber cutting 23% of HR while denying AI's role; the leanness debate — Lovable at $500m ARR with 146 staff, Cursor at $4bn targeting $6bn, ~$3m ARR/head vs Salesforce's ~$350k — and whether startups permanently run at half the headcount, with the caveat that companies spending 50-70% of revenue on model tokens simply can't also spend it on people. Plus Ramp ($44bn), Revolut ($115bn), Bending Spoons' AOL/Evernote roll-up chasing a $20bn listing, Databricks ($165bn, staying private), and Rory's framing: **money never runs out, it gets scared.**
Key points
- SpaceX opened a $75bn IPO roadshow at a ~$1.77-1.8 trillion valuation, with Elon setting a fixed price (~$135/share, ~$1.8tn) and short-circuiting normal banker-led price discovery.
- Book reportedly only ~2x covered with ~30% to retail; traditional IPOs want 8-10x oversubscription, so the panel splits on whether it pops or breaks issue Thursday night.
- Rory's medium-term call: base rates on IPOs above 10x and especially 70x forward sales argue for a dip; fundamental value reasserts and SpaceX may be worth ~$1tn not $1.7tn within 12 months.
- Ontario Teachers (and University/Washington University endowments holding 10-15% in SpaceX) are framed as the best venture co-investment outcome ever in absolute return; Founders' Fund check dates to 2008.
- OpenAI's go-public filing read as expectations management / optionality, not a hard timeline; frontier-model capital needs (OpenAI last round $122bn, Anthropic $30bn) force the public-markets door.
- Elon monetised xAI's data-centre overbuild into ~$2bn/month (~$24bn/yr) compute revenue — ~$1.25bn Google, ~$950m Anthropic — plus the Cursor deal (~10x forward revenue) to backfill servers.
- Apple paying Google ~$1bn/yr to run Siri on Gemini, versus the ~$20bn Google pays Apple for default search, judged pragmatic given Apple's handset/context advantage — not giving up on AI.
- Uber cut 23% of HR and rescinded remote work (back to 3-day office); company denies AI's role despite 95% of engineers using it daily; panel skeptical AI explains the full 23%.
- Leanness debate: Lovable hit $500m ARR with 146 employees, Cursor $4bn ARR targeting $6bn; ~$3m ARR/head vs Salesforce ~$350k, but token-heavy firms spend 50-70% of revenue on intelligence not headcount.
- Fintech repricing: Revolut at $115bn (raising ~$750m secondary, ~$4.5bn revenue / ~$1.5bn operating income), Ramp at $44bn (>$1bn ARR, ~30-40x), trading like financials adjusted for growth.
- Roll-ups and the IPO wave: Bending Spoons (AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, WeTransfer) at ~$1.3bn revenue chasing a $20bn listing via price hikes; Databricks raising privately at $165bn; SaaS now trades at a discount to the S&P 500 for the first time.
Notable quotes
You look at those circumstances and you say there's a non trivial chance that it pops.
I think fundamental value here reasserts itself.
This is the best venture capital deal ever in terms of absolute return.
He said consumers don't want to work.
2 Billion a month, 24 billion a year in terms of compute revenue.
So he is the most efficient core weave with the lowest cost of capital.
But oh, my God, did he turn a loss into a win in the space of three months?
When you do a comparison, it's over 3 million ARR per head versus and I'm not but like a salesforce which is 350k per head, it's 9 times more efficient.
And so my sense is that roughly over the coming years, startups will be half the size that they used to be for revenue, including enterprise.
There's always money when people aren't afraid, when things get scary, it's not that money runs out, it's that money gets scared.
Themes
- IPO-window reopening
- AI-capex monetisation
- fundamental-value reversion
- AI-driven headcount leverage
- fintech incumbent repricing
Mentioned
People
Companies
Ideas
- fixed-price IPO vs banker price discovery
- IPO-window reopening for frontier-AI
- valuation reverting to fundamentals (base rates on forward-sales multiples)
- compute-revenue monetisation of data-centre overbuild
- revenue-per-employee leverage from AI / token spend vs headcount
- fintech repricing of inefficient incumbent banks
- consumer-vs-enterprise AI bets (delight vs automation)
- roll-up economics via price hikes on sticky inertia users
- money gets scared, not scarce (Minsky-style risk appetite)
- frontier-model capital needs forcing public markets