A $2 trillion debut would be the largest initial public offering<\/a> (IPO) ever, and the company it would take the record from is barely two months into public life. SpaceX(NASDAQ:SPCX) priced the current largest IPO on record in June, at a valuation of about $1.77 trillion.<\/p>\n That makes SpaceX a timely case study. Anyone weighing whether to chase the next record listing can look at exactly what the market did with the last one.<\/p>\n ]]> Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n A $2 trillion ask<\/p>\n The reported appetite for Anthropic rests on explosive growth. Preliminary figures the company shared with prospective investors put second-quarter revenue above $11.5 billion, more than double the first quarter’s $4.73 billion, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. Investors who spoke to the Financial Times expect annualized revenue of $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year.<\/p>\n Days before filing, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. In other words, its backers are now discussing a price about double what they paid in late May.<\/p>\n Worth noting, too: According to the same reporting, Anthropic’s own senior executives haven’t fixed a valuation target, even privately. The $2 trillion figure belongs to the investors, not the company.<\/p>\n Up 67%, down 22%, back to even<\/p>\n SpaceX<\/a> sold 555,555,555 shares at $135 apiece on June 11, raising $75 billion at the offer in the largest IPO on record — and about $86 billion in all, once its underwriters exercised their option to buy 83.3 million more shares. Trading began the next day, and the first public trade came at $150.<\/p>\n The 10 weeks since gave buyers the full range of outcomes. Shares ran as high as $225.64, a 67% gain from the offer price. They then fell as low as $104.83, which is 22% below it.<\/p>\n As of this writing, the stock sits within a few percent of $135 — about 40% below its high, and almost exactly where it started.<\/p>\n So the investors who got shares at the offer price have made essentially nothing in two months. And anyone who bought at the opening trade is down about 9%.<\/p>\n The sellers set the record<\/p>\n The business performed the whole time, which is what makes the return so instructive. SpaceX grew second-quarter revenue 92% year over year to $7.81 billion, and its AI segment’s revenue more than tripled year over year to $2.6 billion. The company signed $14.1 billion of cloud computing<\/a> contracts during the quarter, narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier, and ended June with $47.5 billion in backlog.<\/p>\n Growth like that usually moves a stock. Across the full 10 weeks, on net, it hasn’t moved this one — because the offer price had already charged for it. Even today, SpaceX trades at about 57 times revenue, annualizing its second-quarter figure. The sellers, in short, set a record price precisely because the growth story was at full strength — and the buyers have spent two months waiting for the story to catch up to what they paid.<\/p>\n Anthropic’s math could work out better. If revenue lands where its backers project, a $2 trillion valuation<\/a> would be about 18 times the annualized revenue they expect by December. That is a lower price against hoped-for sales than SpaceX commanded.<\/p>\n But it still assumes annualized revenue<\/a> grows another 50% or more from the $65 billion annualized run rate the company reported for late July. And it prices that assumption in before the company has reported a single quarter in public.<\/p>\n Of course, SpaceX’s two months prove nothing about the next two years, and a business that keeps doubling can outgrow any starting price eventually. But I think the two-month record is worth taking at face value.<\/p>\n The largest IPO ever delivered a 67% surge, a 53% collapse from that peak, and, for the investor who simply bought and held from the start, a return of about zero — all while the business nearly doubled its revenue year over year. A record-setting price means the growth is charged upfront. Two months in, that is exactly how it has traded.<\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now?<\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this:<\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks<\/a> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Space Exploration Technologies wasn\u2019t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.<\/p>\n Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $429,223!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $1,318,055!*<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s worth noting Stock Advisor\u2019s total average return is 965% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.<\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of August 22, 2026. <\/p>\n Daniel Sparks<\/a> and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Points Anthropic’s backers reportedly expect an October listing at a $2 trillion valuation or more, which would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53,1320,1317,1316,1319,1318,1321,1506,144,1310],"class_list":["post-148451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anthropic","tag-anthropic","tag-futures","tag-index-market-quote","tag-index-market-quotes","tag-index-market-symbol","tag-index-market-symbols","tag-indices","tag-nvda","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-the-globe-and-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/barchart-news-media-prod.aws.barchart.com\/FC\/421bb8a4cc49711a5a4b5e25de97ea43\/%3Furl%3Dhttps%253a%252f%252fcdn.content.foolcdn.com%252fimages%252f1umn9qeh%252fproduction%252fa3374deba74c53df3367d3de7851adf5eb48ed84-1200x800.jpg%253fw%253d1200%2526h%253d800%2526q%253d75%2526auto%253dformat%26amp%3Bw%3D700\")
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