FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:00)
All right, let's do this. My name is Slava Rubin. I'm one of the founders here at Vincent. We're excited to have you back for this pre-IPO series. Vincent, you can sign up for the Alternative Investment Report, listen to the Smart Humans Podcast, and of course learn about all these pre-IPO companies. With me is none other than Jan-Erik as always from Sacra, who's the brains of the operation. Jan-Erik feel free to say hi.
Jan-Erik Asplund (00:26)
Thanks, Slava, Great to be here.
Slava Rubin (00:29)
All right. So lots of folks have been saying, you know, what's next now that SpaceX has IPO'd? How should I be thinking about SpaceX and what is the impact of SpaceX on this entire lineage of next level IPOs coming forward? There's discussion of OpenAI going public, Anthropic going public, and others. So there's a lot on the line here as to how SpaceX has been performing and how it could impact these upcoming IPOs. So we're going to dive into SpaceX.
We're going to dive into the other big ones like OpenAI Anthropic and the Impact, and the others that you should be thinking about in the months and quarters to come. So we did a snapshot of the audience, and it's pretty interesting. It's even more accredited than normal, and we have a lot of more advanced investors. It seems as if, you know, there's a lot of folks who are getting used to this.
type of investment and wanting to dive right into this, let's call it very busy market, hot market is a little bit scary of a word, but it is it is pretty, pretty frothy what's going on. First, a word from our compliance department. Nothing in this presentation should be construed as an offer to sell securities or solicitation of an offer to buy securities. All investments involve risk and the possibility of loss, including loss of principal, and neither past performance nor forward looking information.
Is a guarantee of future results. So, as I mentioned, our agenda for today is really going to be three parts. First, we're going to discuss what's happened with SpaceX since it's IPO'd. And we're going to discuss back and forth around what do we think is possible in the coming weeks and months, quarters, etc. Is this a buy? Is it a hold? Is it a sell? We'd love to hear opinions from the audience.
You can put that into the QA. And as always, as you have any questions, feel free to put that into the QA and I'll try to incorporate it into the conversation. After that, we're going to talk about these upcoming IPOs. And then finally, a little bit broader view about all the possible IPOs in the pipeline for the next 12 months. With that said, let's start off with what is the catalyst for all these discussions. The biggest of the big IPOs, which is SpaceX.
Which you know, went live just several weeks ago and what's happened since, Jan-Erik Give us some background.
Jan-Erik Asplund (02:51)
Yeah, so you and I talked about would SpaceX hit 200 you know, after its IPO. I think we last talked about SpaceX, maybe it was the day of or day before, two days before, something of that. so I'm not gonna go over the details of exactly what I predicted would happen, but you know, we we can see that there was a sort of initial rally you know, around the excitement of of SpaceX finally.
Going public, everyone, you know, and their financial advisor was trying to get them access to SpaceX shares. priced at 135, closed first day, 161, hit 226 within a within a couple of days. and that was sort of the peak so far. So since then it's given back most of its gains, or or sorry, it's given back all of its gains. It's currently sitting a little bit below the IPO price. So yesterday when I put these slides together, we were at about
109. we're actually currently back up to about 118 119, sorry. so up about nine percent ahead of this sort of you know extremely anticipated quarterly earnings report. So you know, from here, who knows? so far it has been a very bumpy time on the public markets as there was all this crazy scarcity and and
frenzy and then there was kind of a industry wide, I think, reassessment of of a lot of these AI spend projections and you know, the investability of that. So that's, you know, essentially what's been what's gone on.
Slava Rubin (04:21)
Yeah, so it's a funny time today to be discussing about SpaceX because actually the first earnings ever comes out after market close. So at 4 30 PM Eastern is when we're going to be getting the first earnings. So this could have a significant impact. are you thinking earnings are gonna make a do we think it's gonna be positive earnings? And more importantly, what impact do you think earnings could have on the actual stock trade?
Jan-Erik Asplund (04:51)
Yeah, it's a good question. And as a a very amateur prognosticator, as people who maybe were here for the last SpaceX report might be observing, I I think my sort of your reason that I maybe discount a little bit the earnings report as delivering kind of, you know, valuable information in and of itself. Let's separate out like tr you know, trading around the earnings report, you know, fading earnings.
I I don't see the stock price performance so far as having had to do much with kind of the business fundamentally, you know, the revenue, right? I I think that the company has has been, you know, it's been essentially the same company, you know, since the IPO, and there's been this absolutely massive you know, rise and collapse. So that's why I might question whether, you know, there's going to be sort of
valuable signal about the business in this first earnings report. if you've been paying attention to SpaceX for, you know, the two decades that it's been around, I would be surprised. But I think the main thing I'll be interested to see from it will be kind of the AI, whatever they say about AI revenue, you know, because that has been the big sort of story around the S1, you know, driving a lot of the sort of future contracted, you know, recurring revenue.
which we talked about in our last report. so seeing what kind of guidance they give on that will be interesting, at least.
Slava Rubin (06:21)
Completely agree. So much knowledge has been known for the last 20 years about SpaceX and leading up to the IPO. And it feels as if so much was front-loaded as huge announcements, whether it was the Anthropic deal, the Google deal, et cetera, into leading up to the IPO, that it's gonna be hard to believe that the fundamentals of this earnings report could have some significant net positive.
Obviously, if there's some sort of surprise negative, I think that could go a bit sideways. But that would be shocking. I would like to think that Elon and the team has almost, like, let's call it guaranteed a sort a certain level of first quarter earnings. So this almost feels like a non-event to me. That said, I do think the one variable, like you mentioned, is the AI revenues.
So if there are any interesting surprises there, which I again, I don't know that there will be, but that could be a catalyst. there's already as part of the unlocks, once the first earnings report comes out, that does do, you know, unlocks the first wave of the private shares that are now public to start getting distributed. So it'll be interesting to see how much of that has already been hedged away in advance of this unlock.
Or how much that actually has any implications. Let's let's talk a little bit more about the AI revenues.
So give us a little bit more colour there.
Jan-Erik Asplund (07:48)
Yeah. So these numbers that have been bandied about with Anthropic paying, you know, over a billion dollars a month, or contracted to, committed to, sort of non-committed, non-committally committed this revenue to to SpaceX for AI compute, plus Google, you know, it comes out to over two billion a month, 26 billion annualized. And this has been a big talking point around SpaceX because you know, this makes AI a bigger business than
launch and Starlink, you know, combined. right. And and suddenly makes the multiple look very kind of normal. the only problem the sort of maybe the problem that investors are seeing here is that SpaceX is also thereby making itself kind of exposing itself more to this, you know, the AI funding cycle, where to continue receiving this 26 billion annualized and to grow it, they basically need
to to they need Google to continue you know spending this amount, they need Anthropic to continue spending this amount. They need other customers that they're gonna have do this. And if you know any of these companies that are buying compute sort of have to cut spending or let's say their IPOs don't go as well or they delay going public, then there could be a bit of a you know sort of whiplash to the expected committed revenue, which you know might be one of those kinds of surprises that you mentioned.
coming out on an earnings earnings call. Obviously not every customer is the same here as far as risk. I mean, Google is very unlikely to I would say, you know, if Google slows down AI spending in a in a massive way, then that's problematic for the whole space. But they are able to fund it from their ads business, you know, without too much trouble. So there's that. There's also the fact that the contracts themselves are not super durable because they're sort of very designed to be
easy to get out of for both sides. So there there's some question marks around the quality of that AI revenue that I think, yeah, again, might be one of the big kind of exposed, you know, vulnerabilities about the business.
Slava Rubin (09:47)
Yeah, for better or worse, now investing into SpaceX, you're really long the AI trade. And if that unwinds in any way, you have a lot of exposure there. It used to be a space launch company, then it all of a sudden had a telecom leg with Starlink. But now you're really getting exposure to AI, which again is very good and very bad, depending on how things play out. But if you look at where Amazon just priced and some of the other earnings that just came in, I mean the AI trade looks like it's pretty long in general.
Google for the first time ever, you know, was negative cash flows because of how much they're investing into AI, which is a massive statement. So what do the next twelve months look like in terms of the unlocks and things we should be thinking about in terms of dates?
Jan-Erik Asplund (10:32)
Yeah. So one of the big things we talked about last time again was sort of the supply-demand issue. And when are the release points for you know, people being able to sell their stock, which might introduce downward pressure. and from where we are right now, you know, the point is basically that there is going to be additional, significant additional supply being created before we get necessarily that big institutional demand. Right. And so this is kind of a big thing that
was talked about in the run up to the IPO was it potentially SpaceX getting enlisted on the, you know, S P 500 right away, you know, as in sort of in sort of a narrative violation of of how these things typically go, which did not happen. so that was sort of a big loss of potential institutional demand at the time. there also wasn't very much, you know, stock floated. They floated less than five percent, which, you know,
Doesn't sound very much, but then it does make sense when you look at is 5% of a 1.7 you know trillion dollar company. so it's already a huge amount of stock being floated, but again, you know, reduce the amount available out there for indices. and so yeah, we we are you know looking at more sellers coming out to the market for SpaceX, making it more investable, but you know, obviously the sort of natural conclusion would be that the the price.
could, you know, go down, right, as there's more supply coming out of the market. yeah. Although future index, future institutional ownership going up would be a positive sort of in the long run.
Slava Rubin (12:03)
Yeah, so you have these two counterweights, right? You have these unlocks where there's capacity hitting the market, and then you have these various indexes and passive holders who are just looking probably to be buying. And it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, which then all of this information really leads us to should I buy, hold, or sell right now?
Jan-Erik Asplund (12:28)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's clearly cheap compared to its peak. it's even a little bit cheap compared to the price at which it went public. So if you were excited about the stock at the IPO price and didn't buy it, then this is a perfect opportunity. You know, you'll feel good in theory about your purchase. it is still very expensive compared to most public companies, but you know, it's also not like most other public companies. So if you're a sort of believer
and see the vision and and you know SpaceX combining with XAI to form SpaceX AI maybe combining with Tesla gets you very excited then I think it's a great price. I think you still have these businesses launch Starlink. You have AI, which I think if you fall on the side that you know we are sort of still at the beginning stages of A AI becoming relevant.
I don't think the necessarily the the AI bubble talk scares you too much, then there's a very strong sort of bull case to make. yeah, still expensive. That's probably a lot of the the bear case, is that it costs a lot more than other stocks and there's still question marks around kind of the biggest driver of revenue now, which is the AI compute business. So I don't know. For me, I I I you know.
I see at one nine yesterday, one eighteen today. I don't think that's a terrible I mean it doesn't seem like a terrible place to me to buy. but then with all the supply coming on the market, you know, it's hard to it's hard to say could go could go lower, I think. But yeah, a very compelling, a very direct answer to should you buy SpaceX from me.
Slava Rubin (14:09)
So let's go to a 12-month calendar. You have $10,000. do you buy today? Do you buy some other day based on one of these catalysts? How do you do you not buy? meaning, how are you investing your ten thousand dollars if it's SpaceX?
Jan-Erik Asplund (14:26)
Yeah, I I think with with a company like SpaceX, I guess for me, it's something that I personally imagine SpaceX will be around for a long time. So that's kind of my where I start from. And I think it will, you know, continue to grow in value. and this might be some this might be sort of a boring answer for, you know, if you're interested in short term trading, but my you know, personal financial advice, aka not advice.
is to just sort of buy, you know, dollar cost average in because I I would think that this is it could be the lowest SpaceX ever goes where we are right now. it might not be, but I don't really want to think about that. And I'd rather just get exposure. so I'd probably parcel out my buys over the course of the next year of that 10 grand and try to you know not think too much about the sort of short term price action as a
you know, people who are Tesla investors have learned to do and sort of focus on yeah, accumulating and and and you know, sort of looking longer term. I think it's probably one of the longest term businesses, you know, that you can sort of imagine.
Slava Rubin (15:32)
Absolutely. So my opinion is equal to Jan-Erik that ten years from now, SpaceX is still a great company doing incredible things with potentially things that we don't even know about today that they've advanced into. there was a lot of momentum going into the IPO and I think it was quite expensive, even though it really quickly traded up on the hype, but now is coming down. I do think this first year is going to be quite volatile.
I think you could see some momentum runs, but also see some significant drops. I would take the ten thousand dollars and dollar cost average, probably five times two thousand dollars a pop. And I would try to find idiot either idiosyncratic times when SpaceX has a negative narrative, whether let's call it a horrible earnings today or something, or some other failure or such.
Or when there's macro issues that just really bring down the entire AI discussion, where for one reason or another the market goes risk off and stocks like this go massively on sale. If I had to you know put my you know message out that I think is gonna have me, you know, tied up to what I said, which is I do think it will go below a hundred dollars. And I think there's a chance it'll go below ninety dollars. And
I think that we should just take the opportunity over this first year to try to buy those dips. and it's not because I think it's a bad company. I think it's a great company. I just think it's gonna go on sale and it's a great time to buy when it's cheaper. So when it just dipped down to one three, I thought that was a nice purchase opportunity, but it's still a bit expensive. I do think you'll see it below a hundred dollars and I'll wanna test that floor. And I think that could be a very, very attractive entry point, potentially even below ninety.
Will it go below a trillion? I don't think so, but I think it will test a trillion you know, at some point, potentially, depending how the macro goes.
I do think that it could definitely reach five trillion or more in ten years or less. So I I do think for the buy and hold you will be rewarded. So what are the implications then for the SpaceX action and what's been happening on the other big IPOs? So let's go to that slide, which is what's the IPO market look like?
Jan-Erik Asplund (17:41)
Yeah. So I would say in general, you know, SpaceX's IPO is great for other companies that want to go public. I think there is proof positive that investors are sort of happy to finance an extremely large offering, right? 75 billion that SpaceX raised. you know, despite the sort of price performance since then, it's still a $1.5 trillion company right now.
And so hence sort of why we're seeing, you know, all these companies taking steps towards potential listings. We'll talk about OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks, but you have a bunch of others like you know, Discord, Oura, Strava, Groq, Kraken are all sort of moving in that direction. and so there's a few things going on, right? One across the industry, not just with SpaceX, they're asking people are asking more questions about kind of
You know, capital needs, I think, has become one of the big questions with AI profitability. You know, are you how exposed are you to sort of AI spending? So to where like any slowdown there will disproportionately impact your business. but you know, I think overall you have a very big listing here that shows there's appetite. question maybe is you know, where sort of like
How much can the market handle at one time? Right. Cause SpaceX obviously has also absorbed a lot of investor capital. so how much is sort of left over for other businesses is a question. I think in general, the market is is open. There's just a little bit more selectivity, maybe a little bit less tolerance for super aggressive pricing as well.
Slava Rubin (19:20)
Yeah, I it's fascinating. The pre-IPO market is so hot, all looking for those IPOs, whether it's more money into Revolute, more money into Databricks, more money into Stripe, more money. I feel like every day we're hearing some like, you know, massive pre-IPO company that is raising more capital. So there's no question it's it's a hot time. let's talk about some of the big players one by one. So what's the implication here?
So the big three that are potentially next are open AI, Anthropic, and Databricks, all over a hundred billion dollar valuations, open AI Anthropic flirting with a trillion or more. you know, what's your commentary here?
Jan-Erik Asplund (19:59)
Yeah, so I I think OpenAI was second to file after Anthropic I think for now OpenAI's sort of question that I think is still unresolved is is are they going to list in 2026? you know, and and potentially have a little bit of a hit given the reaction to SpaceX, or do they raise more private capital and and sort of wait until next year? Anthropic, on the other hand, is full steam ahead.
I think October or September is the latest on when they're gonna do that. They're sort of riding a high right now. as far as product sentiment, they're sort of pricing premium and and revenue growing in alignment with that. And so I think they're sort of striking while the iron is hot. And then databricks being
Slava Rubin (20:46)
You originally said October for Anthropic and then you changed to September. What is it that you've learned or heard that made you switch that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:54)
sorry, I I should no deeper meaning. I'm I'm just mi I'm just not sure exactly when it's supposed to be.
Slava Rubin (21:01)
Okay, perfect.
Jan-Erik Asplund (21:03)
Databricks effectively, you know, now kind of feels like a retro name, but you know, was one of the biggest pre-IPO companies and still is. you know, into sort of a different test, right? That it's not as capital intensive. It's indexed a little bit on AI, enterprise software, not the kind that you can replace with a vibe coded cloud app. So that will be interesting to see sort of how high growth tech company more generally.
performs. but yeah, I think these are probably the three the three biggies right now.
Slava Rubin (21:36)
So let's go to open AI for a second, which is you know, A, what commentary would you put here? And B, you know, if it was over under December 31st, when is the IPO? Is it in 2026 or is it after? Where do you land?
Jan-Erik Asplund (21:54)
Yeah, I feel like it depends a lot on you know what happens with Anthropic, probably, but I would guess maybe 2027. I think they've been kind of you know dinged for the high cash burn. that heavy spending is is a little bit more under scrutiny now. And, you know, I think it's also bad timing with Anthropic for determined to go public, potentially soaking up some of that investor capital that would go to open AI.
Otherwise, and dealing with Anthropic kind of having this you know, bit of a sentiment lead at this moment. So waiting for 2027 has kind of, you know, potential significant upsides around, you know, deep them being able to maybe get more profitable, reduce spending, let things like ads develop, you know, get a little more revenue, take advantage of the one thing they have over Anthropic in a big way, which is consumer adoption.
because regular people still use Chat GPT. and so if they can sort of do that, then I think twenty twenty seven, it seems like would set up better for, you know, for open AI to go public.
Slava Rubin (22:57)
Yeah, I would agree that. I'm in I've always been in the camp that they will be after Anthropic. I looked like I'd be wrong there for a while, but I think I'm still gonna it's still gonna play out that way. I did hear though, did you hear this rumor that the CFO mentioned that they're all hands that they have like more revenue in July than they did in all of Q two?
Jan-Erik Asplund (23:17)
I think I did see that. Yeah.
Slava Rubin (23:19)
I mean that's a pretty big statement.
Jan-Erik Asplund (23:23)
It's always hard to Figure out what they mean when it's a revenue run rate. You know, yeah,
Slava Rubin (23:29)
Is it booking I wouldn't be surprised.
Jan-Erik Asplund (23:31)
exactly. I I wouldn't be surprised because I actually think personally that open AI has surpassed Anthropic again on on coding and that it's kind of one of these things where the market still thinks Anthropic is the leader and like it'll flip in the next few months. That's kind of my theory, but we'll see how it plays out. But I wouldn't be surprised if
They have significantly grown revenue this summer because of how good their most recent models have been, versus actually what's sort of emerging now is like a little bit of a little like winter of discontent or summer of discontent around the behavior of clouds, like clouds frontier models. there's a bit of a it's always back and forth. And I think we're sort of yeah, could be swinging in open I open AI's direction right now.
Slava Rubin (24:17)
So if you have access to open AI right now, are you buying it at what price?
Jan-Erik Asplund (24:24)
yeah. I I think so. I'm happy at the I mean I'm probably happy at the last private round, you know, at that eight hundred eight hundred fifty two billion. I think that makes sense. I mean I I you know, after SpaceX.
Slava Rubin (24:38)
Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm still bullish on open AI, but I I do think it's expensive. So I would not be rushing in. if you could get it at a discount, I think it's an interesting play for sure. Let's move on to Anthropic. So as it relates to Anthropic, I guess my question for you is it's not really a function of if they're gonna go public, right? It feels like they're definitely gonna go public. So my question for you, for the sake of having some predictions.
based on everything to talk about in the commentary, what do you think the Anthropic IPO price is?
Jan-Erik Asplund (25:13)
that's a great question.
Slava Rubin (25:15)
Let's assume they go public on October seventh. So on October seventh, what is the IPO price? you know, like SpaceX was listed, I think one point seven trillion. Yeah. So what is this gonna be listed at?
Jan-Erik Asplund (25:32)
Yeah, it's interesting looking back, you know, the last sort of private sale of SpaceX was 800. the XAI merger valued it at 1.2 and then IPO it at 1.7 in June, at least four months later. whereas Anthropic's last round was nine point or or in spring twenty twenty six. I maybe I would put it at like a one point three, one point four type number.
Given the revenue increases then.
Slava Rubin (25:59)
What's what's the revenue run rate at that time? What's your prediction?
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:03)
it's a a great question because we've actually been trying to update our Anthropic model for a couple months. So we had them at forty seven billion in May. let's say seventy.
Slava Rubin (26:17)
So seventy
So is that like let's call it twenty X?
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:21)
yeah, exactly. seems reasonable.
Slava Rubin (26:25)
Sorry, you said one number? You were like one point three?
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:28)
Yeah, one point three, one point four.
Slava Rubin (26:30)
Yeah.
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:31)
yeah, with with seventy, yeah.
Slava Rubin (26:34)
Yeah, I think the bogey is is it above or below one point five? that's kind of where my head is at. And I think it really has to do with the growth rate. I think if they have like a super clear path to a hundred billion soon, I think there's a chance that they even price like high like maybe even higher than SpaceX. But it's really a question of how fast is that growth rate or does it feel like it's tapering off?
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's been explosive. I mean, just to give context, you know, the first half of twenty twenty six it was it you know, going from nine billion to forty seven. So I'd be
Slava Rubin (27:12)
That was me.
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:13)
very interested to see how it's sort of Q three, Q four fair.
Slava Rubin (27:19)
Okay. Any other commentary on Anthropic?
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:23)
I mean it's all enterprise, right? It's it's virtually no consumer brand to speak of. And so all the excitement is around businesses adopting Anthropic. I think Claude, the way ChatGPT made Claude or sorry, ChatGPT made AI no like a sort of a thing that normal people in the world know about and use. Anthropic did it for business, where a lot of people felt very resistant to AI until
sonnet models sort of coming out in twenty twenty five. And so it's really a sort of bet on on them continuing to win in the enterprise, which has been their focus, you know, to their credit for the last four or five years.
Slava Rubin (28:03)
Perfect. Let's move on to we have Databricks as well. So, you know, Databricks is not one of these LLM companies, but we're putting it in this category because it is a monster company that's worth a ton that's getting, you know, round after round after round of private kind of pre IP pre IPO investment. what do you think of Databricks as an investment right now? Like is there money to be made in it going public?
Jan-Erik Asplund (28:31)
I definitely think so. It's it's an AI sort of beneficiary, but it's not it's not capital intensive the way that a frontier model lab like OpenAI or Anthropic is. so you're getting exposed to AI through kind of one of the top you know non-affiliated players in the space, and it sells you know sort of enterprise software. It's a business model that
investors understand very well. We had one of the biggest IPOs, you know, before we started doing webinars together, but I would have loved to have done a Snowflake one because that was a huge IPO. Databricks is like, you know, very comparable to Snowflake, but you know, growing significantly faster. so it's a very exciting business, you know, I think to have go public. It potentially has that risk of getting lost a little bit in the, you know, sort of SpaceX Anthropic
open AI, you know, procession, and potentially lose, you know, a little bit of that investor attention. so people, you know, they might want to wait a little bit for sort of these mega IPOs to to come out and sort of set the market. But I think it'll be really interesting to see because it is a strong business, a well-known business model of enterprise software, not one that is really at any risk of being sort of you know,
obviated with with op AI vibe coding. so more of a conventional investment, but with exposure to AI, which, you know, could bode very well.
Slava Rubin (30:02)
So quick update, thank you, Brian. so KOTU actually just invested recently right into Databricks actually at a one eighty eight billion. and is there a reason Jan-Erik you didn't put that in or you just just a quick update?
Jan-Erik Asplund (30:15)
You're right. You're right. We have that on Sacra too, but I just missed it. So yeah, one eighty eight. Still, you know, I mean
Slava Rubin (30:23)
So let's just talk about this for a second. So you have 188 Databricks private, 115 Snowflake public. So do you know offhand? and if you do that'd be great, because this isn't pre-planned, do you know offhand what the revenue and growth rate of Databricks is versus the revenue and growth rate of Snowflake?
Jan-Erik Asplund (30:47)
yeah, it's so this is slightly
Slightly apples to oranges, because I don't have the normalized comp off the top of my head. But Snowflake is around five billion in sort of trailing 12 months revenue. Yeah. And Databricks is last we had them was at 7 billion sort of forward looking annualized. And that was in June. So, you know, Databricks now is probably up at 7.5 forward looking. So
Just ballparking, I would say close to Snowflake, if not if not surpassing them, very close to surpassing them.
Slava Rubin (31:24)
So my opinion on Databricks is it is an amazing company. And I loved it when it was still high double digits, and we've been talking about it for a long time, and you could have doubled your money along the way, if not a little bit more. I do think it's starting to get fully priced. And I am a little nervous that is there a lot of premium to be made in the public markets by getting in at 188 or 200, whatever it is that you can get in at.
Is it a slam dunk to be a $500 billion company? I think it could happen in the years to come, but I don't think that's an overnight sort of return. So I think Databricks is a phenomenal company. Absolutely gonna be around in 10 years. I don't know that it's very cheap, to say the least. All right.
Great. Let's move on to people are asking about Waymo and other companies. So this is perfect transition, which is if there's a company you want to chat about, feel free to throw it into the commentary. But we're now gonna cover really quickly, we'll mean that the word really quickly. We're now gonna cover 20 names that are out there. This is not an exhaustive list, there's just some names we wanted to cover, but here are potentially the next IPOs. These aren't the best companies, the hottest companies.
These are just the companies that we're saying that could be the next coming IPOs. So yeah, you want to give us a quick overview here?
Jan-Erik Asplund (32:50)
Yeah, exactly. There's a few here, like Discord that have been sort of in this pipeline for a long time. and then there's a few others like Canva and Oura which I think have really sort of, you know, had explosive, you know, 2025s and beginnings of 2026, where both are indexed on AI to different extents. I think Canva a little more so. whereas Oura is a little more indexed on kind of the growth of this, you know, digital quantified health movement.
a little bit like Strava. and so this is just about kind of exposure to different trends and different themes. you know, I'm personally excited about about Canva, which I think has been one of these underappreciated or, you know, underestimated companies for a long time.
Slava Rubin (33:31)
You are excited about Canva
Jan-Erik Asplund (33:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am. I'm excited to see because I think that they are it's a spot where, you know, they appear to be facing disruption a lot from the Foundation Model Labs, Cloud Design, you know, Figma AI. but at the same time, Canva is just so deeply embedded in kind of how, you know, your average company does marketing, does social media, does any kind of graphics work and images. And they've been very fast.
To bundle AI capabilities into the product and acquire their own foundation model lab in Leonardo AI and really have moved very quickly on most of the AI use cases in image, video, and sound generation. and having this interface that is so deeply embedded, I think is really interesting.
Slava Rubin (34:22)
Why isn't Canva Figma all over again? I mean Figma a lot of hype, strong IPO, good opening week, and then has been annihilated.
Jan-Erik Asplund (34:34)
I think I mean, I think Fit Figma the problem is in part that it was kind of a niche technology, you know. It's fundamentally for you know, folks who are designing, you know, apps, designing sites, UX, you know, kind of UX design kind of being one of the core, you know, use cases. It has a passionate following. but I didn't really see them ever grow the business beyond that.
You know, there was a lot of theses around Figma growing into marketing, growing into into product into sales, into other units of the business, which didn't happen. And it really did happen with Canva, right? Which started as like your marketer, social media marketer has to make a little, you know, image in this perfect aspect ratio for Facebook. and it's exploded to become kind of this, you know, one of the core products that companies that need to produce any kind of visual asset
use, which is you know not something you do in Figma. You don't make any of these kinds of social media graphics, you know, website images in Figma. so Canva really managed to sort of expand its its remit in a big way.
Slava Rubin (35:39)
Maybe you already told me your answer, but even though it's comparing apples to oranges, these are not in the same vertical whatsoever, but it is five stocks and there's an opportunity cost across the five. Which of which one does the best for for its IPO and beyond for for the next three years after it IPOs?
Only one.
Jan-Erik Asplund (36:00)
Yeah. I think Canva. I I think Canva because of because of what I just described, the exposure to AI is gonna propel them, is gonna propel them faster. Whereas I think the rest are indexed less on AI and or our index on crypto in the case of Kraken, which is very temperamental. you know, Bitcoin could go crazy and and Kraken could destroy Canva for sure. but I would say Canva for now.
Slava Rubin (36:26)
So I'm give maybe a surprising one. I'm gonna go Oura. I think Canva's gonna have a lot of difficulty with the the AI companies trying to commoditize them. So if they're able to turn themselves into very AI forward, then that's great, which they are very AI forward. And I'll be wrong, but I think Aura has a unique position between the actual consumer connection, the actual physical product, and kind of the
Personalization of everybody's health, wanting to know their own information. I think there's potential there. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go there. Let's go to the next slide.
So here are 15 more names. Let's kind of take them let's call it a column by column and just give your quick thoughts here. Again, these are not any specific 15 names. We just feel like these 15 names are names that people are talking about and potentially could IPO. so talk to us first with AI and data.
Jan-Erik Asplund (37:26)
Yeah, I think across AI, we have a bunch of players where some of these key questions with SpaceX around unit economics, you know, profitability, capital intensiveness kind of get amplified or certain parts of that story get amplified with these different players. so I think with perplexity, one of the big ones is kind of, you know, can they monetize this better? Can they win people away from using Google?
Open AI, you know, their original premise was kind of access to every model all in one place. but you know, is that kind of sufficient to take perplex up into the, you know, billions of revenue phase where you have Anthropic and open AI? I think that is a big question mark.
Slava Rubin (38:10)
I feel like Perplexity had a lot of hype. They're really trying to still find themselves for a while. They were getting priced up, priced up, priced up, but then they lost that momentum, right? They were getting priced up from four to eight, ten, twenty, but then they haven't really yet had that price action since the twenty round. so just something to keep in mind. Figure AI.
Jan-Erik Asplund (38:29)
Yeah, I think Figure AI, if you look at what made people nervous about SpaceX, you know, it's all kind of to the nth degree in Figure, where it's, you know, it's physical hardware, it's a lot of manufacturing questions, huge continuing capital requirements. of course, an extremely large theoretical market opportunity that they can address with humanoid labor, as we've talked about on this series in the past. So
You know, a Figure IPO would would require a great deal of faith in public investors to kind of finance this business that you know is currently in pilot stage and and has done some remarkable, you know, sort of marketing and and and shown off their robots. But it will be sort of one where, yeah, if they go public too early, that could be definitely
problematic long term to the success and and probably better to stay private for a bit. and build up more credibility and get more paid deployments going. But yeah, it's more what look
Slava Rubin (39:29)
Figure AI. Figure
AI has been fully priced for sure. So we'll see if there's an IPO soon. I I don't think that's gonna happen soon in my mind. I think some of that robot market needs to be built out. Groq's an interesting one because wasn't grok bought by NVIDIA?
Jan-Erik Asplund (39:43)
So they have a they have a sort of deal with with NVIDIA that is not an acquisition, but is a sort of transfer of IP or or license to use their IP, what have you. So they are technically sort of an independent company, which in theory Nvidia could desire to, you know, you know, have see spun out as its own public company, whether for you know antitrust.
or to kind of seed, you know, what appears to be an independent player in the market with an alternative to GPUs, which is NVIDIA's sort of cash cow. so it's an interesting one because it kind of brings in the sort of core weave Lambda Labs dynamics that we've talked about where they're sort of not a puppet of NVIDIA, but you know, a sort of tightly linked player, which is capital intensive, but that's kind of mitigated a little bit by
being partnered with NVIDIA. but it's it's potentially, you know, in in in theory, it's it's they're producing chips that could be sort of an alternative to the GPU. So it's a very large market opportunity.
Slava Rubin (40:48)
And then coherent.
Jan-Erik Asplund (40:51)
Yeah, cohere is more indexed on kind of sovereign AI. So if you think AI is, you know, really important, it stands to reason that European countries and other countries that are sort of maybe not eager to, you know, give up their give up their data and their market to American based AI companies are going to look for sort of either homemade players or sort more
European style players, right? And Cohere being Canadian is one of the main ones that's that's come up in this space of sovereign AI labs, which could be a really big trend.
Slava Rubin (41:27)
Nice. And then data miner.
Jan-Erik Asplund (41:31)
Yeah. So this is more of a sort of a concrete business, right, to enterprises and governments. It's sort of security risk emergency response type software. So much easier to sort of underwrite than a speculative AI company. but at the same time a little bit more mature. so probably, yeah, not as spectacular of an IPO, but could be a little more of a of a stable one, predictable one.
Slava Rubin (41:56)
So in this category, if you only got to pick one, which one do you like the most?
Jan-Erik Asplund (42:03)
Mm. I think I like probably Groq and then and then Cohere. probably my mo the ones most interesting to me.
Slava Rubin (42:12)
Yeah, I would take Cohere I would take Cohere as well. So in the spirit of time here, we're not gonna go with kind of the explanation play by play, but some of these enterprise and fintechs people are known a bit more. Stripe, obviously, people know. I think it was last price, like around 150. Ramp, you know, the company doing much better than Brex. Obviously, Brex, they were competing and then Brex had the exit to Capital One, but Ramp, I think, is what in the 40s now, billion. Rippling and Deal, both in the HR.
kind of worlds trying to automate all of that in the high teens and then plaid. Plaid's had quite the roller coaster of a ride of a company, I think last priced around eight billion. which of these do you take if you go any pick one? I think this is a little bit harder.
Jan-Erik Asplund (42:57)
Yeah, it's hard choosing among these, which are five great businesses and all sort of capital light, you know, if you're if you're if you're not into some of SpaceX's downsides, I think these companies have very visible revenue and and good gross margin. I'm probably most inclined towards ramp based on kind of, you know, like you said,
As you said, you know, growth, the sort of momentum that they have right now, I think is really strong. And stripe would probably be a second number two for me.
Slava Rubin (43:28)
Yeah, so I would go the reverse. I would have gone Stripe first. I'm not super long rippling a deal, even though they're making tons of cash. I'm just not sure if they have the technology to grow fast and to get massive market. you know, plaid's a little bit of an underdog there that could surprise, but I would probably put my money into Stripe first and then ramp. And then we have this final category, which is a little bit of a hodgepodge, but Anduril we've covered.
Shield AI we've covered, which, you know, Anduril's kind of the best in class in defense tech. I think the rumors that they're raising from their sixty billion now soon at a hundred billion dollar valuation. Shield AI last priced what? Like was it like around twenty?
Jan-Erik Asplund (44:12)
Maybe twelve maybe twelve, thirteen was there around after that?
Slava Rubin (44:15)
Yeah, 12.7. Yeah, exactly. I think there were five before that. And then they doubled. Neuralink's the one that's super hot, right? Neuralink, I think, was last at like nine or something. And then there's rumors that it's like trading at like what is it, 60? Some obnoxious crazy number, which nothing like having a little Elon dust sprinkled. And then I mean Neuralink is the brand computer interface company, which you know, that is way out there.
And it's the sort of thing potentially five years from now when it's crushing it, everybody's like, well, that was obvious. but it wasn't obvious. And then it's had a massive jump in the last couple of years. I mean, Neuralink was one of the more overlooked companies with boring company. But now all of a sudden Neuralink, before you know it, I mean, sixty billion. That's that's crazy. Sierra Space, you want to give a little color on Sierra Space?
Jan-Erik Asplund (45:06)
Yeah, Sierra Space, you know, obviously has kind of not gotten the attention SpaceX has, but they build space transportation, space stations, satellite hardware, space planes. So they do a lot. you know, they have defense contracts, much like SpaceX does, and they were last valued at eight billion back in March.
Slava Rubin (45:25)
And then Fanatics, what's Fanatics last price? Was it like 30 or something? So Fanatics is the sports and collectibles company. They bought tops, they do fan fest. they're big into trading cars, they're having the live commerce, and they're moving into gaming, so gambling and all that stuff and auctions. So is their last price like around thirty?
Jan-Erik Asplund (45:45)
Yeah, exactly. That's from twenty twenty two.
Slava Rubin (45:49)
Yeah, clearly they probably want another round or something, or maybe thinking about going public. So this is really a hodgepodge of category. I'm gonna put you on the spot. Which one do you think does best at its price in this category?
Jan-Erik Asplund (46:05)
I gotta say Anduril I think they just have sort of the you know, a insurmountable lead in defense tech in America. You know, it's the best place to sell defense tech and and they have a huge lead over, you know, Shield AI, not to mention all the other defense tech startups. I think I think fanatics, Sierra Space is interesting business, especially post SpaceX IPO, I think could be really big for them. I think Shield AI is great.
But I yeah, I just can't see past Anduril I left that in there, make it easy for me.
Slava Rubin (46:37)
nice. so I would agree. I think Anduril's awesome. I actually probably take Shield AI. And the only reason I take Shield AI is I think potentially Shield has a better return potential given the lower price entry. So I know a friend of mine came into Shield around five and it's already performed really well. I think Shield could become twenty, thirty, forty in a perfect world.
even a fifty you know billion dollar company which is that's a four or five x to four five x andrew you know that's gotta be bigger than Boeing. So it's a pretty big statement. That's not to say Anduril cannot 4 or 5X. I think it can, but I think it has a lot of work harder work to get there. because if Shield AI quote unquote just becomes the price of Anduril, you've already made a monster return, which I know that's just words simple to say.
Neuralink would have been a nice flyer you know, at nine in the teens, but it's kind of ridiculous at sixty. but you know, it's hard to bet against Elon.
Jan-Erik Asplund (47:43)
You say that now, but when you know, when SpaceX AI combines with Neuralink, you'll be wishing you had some Neuralink.
Slava Rubin (47:50)
That's right. And it all goes into the boring company, you know, just all underground. All right. Well, this has been a really interesting conversation, one of our last before back to school. We've covered a bunch of companies. Obviously, we're all holding our breath for four thirty later today, Eastern for when the SpaceX actual earnings comes out. But it's gonna have some interesting implications. Thank you everybody for joining and have a good rest of your summer. Thanks, Jan-Erik
Jan-Erik Asplund (48:19)
Thanks. Bye.
