Retail investors are already picking sides in the coming OpenAI vs SpaceX IPO showdown

Us retail investors love a good show, and right now, nothing is more sensational than the incoming fight between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX on the stock market.

One’s promising to sell AI to every company with a laptop, the other wants to beam internet from space while building a bus to Mars.

But if you’re picking who’s going to actually win over the stock market, it’s OpenAI. At least that’s what the author of this article thinks. I mean, Sam (for all his warts) has cleaner books, clearer revenue, and more brains behind his company.

While Elon, charming as he can be, has SpaceX still burning through cash to fund rockets and satellites and Star Wars dreams.

And also, Sam doesn’t miss deadlines as often as Elon does.

We’re about to witness three of the biggest tech IPOs in history with OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic all trying to lock in top dollar from an audience that’s already been burned by hype. Sure, we’re all mostly fond of Elon, but we are getting tired.

We want results, we want a plan, we want someone who isn’t sitting in a room sending thousands of controversial tweets every day in his mid-50s and calling for the abolishment of the European Union as well as literal war crimes.

Elon’s rocket math at SpaceX isn’t flying with retail anymore

Elon keeps trying to distract with shiny toys and Twitter drama, but Tesla stock is down year-over-year, returns are trash, and investors are starting to treat him like that friend who never pays you back.

The guy was just at dinner with President Trump to celebrate the illegal capture of Venezuela’s Maduro when he was calling him an alleged pedophile in that now-infamous but deleted tweet. His politics is the reason Tesla was dethroned as the world’s largest EV maker in 2025, as Cryptopolitan previously reported, and it is the reason sales have collapsed literally everywhere on earth. Guess Elon doesn’t care since, according to his best friend, Trump, “he is addicted to Fentanyl and is hardly ever sober.”

OpenAI, meanwhile, is dry on the outside, aggressive on the inside. Sam’s been winning lawsuits, keeping his head down, and focusing on enterprise deals. The court fight between him and Elon over OpenAI’s origin is still happening in San Francisco, but Sam came armed. His legal team?Morrison & Foerster and Wachtell Lipton.

Elon, meanwhile, is using boutique firms and one guy who moonlights as a clown, Jaymie Parkkinen. “All of my comedy friends; none of them can believe I’m a lawyer,” Parkkinen said. It’s not a metaphor. It’s in the court transcripts.

And while that circus plays out, OpenAI is already generating revenue. It’s not just a cool product. It’s a full enterprise pipeline. Microsoft’s invested. There are paying customers. Every time someone prompts ChatGPT, it’s money in the bank. The compute costs are high, but the demand is higher. And when this thing goes public, it’s going to hit like a hammer.

Jimmy Cramer even weighed in. “The biggest winner in a power gating scenario might be META,” he said, “because it can pull back on spending and not worry about OpenAI, which won’t be able to make its expensive buildout work either: not enough workers, too little equipment.” He may have a point. But if OpenAI gets public money flowing in, all that changes. Quickly.

Retail investors want to make bank, not see more chaos

OpenAI had hit a $500 billion valuation in October, and is now looking to double that with a $1 trillion IPO. Sam’s empire seems like a business that pays its employees ridiculously well, and Wall Street loves predictable cash flow, especially the kind that doesn’t need five years, government backing with taxpayer funds, a NASA puppet, and a launchpad to show up.

SpaceX sold shares last December at an $800 billion valuation, and Elon confirmed he wants to take it public in Q4 of 2026. But that date feels like every other Elon deadline; loud, confident, and so fake.

This guy is still trying to get Starship fully operational, and Starlink has turned into a weird mix of telecom company and satellite monopoly. I mean, yeah, it might eventually bring in recurring revenue, but right now, it’s just expensive, delayed, and sitting in orbit with no real business model behind it.

Samuel Kerr, who runs equity capital markets at Mergermarket, called the IPOs a “big market event” and even compared it to Saudi Aramco’s $1.88 trillion IPO in 2019. But Samuel also said OpenAI would be different.

Nick Patience from Futurum Group pointed out that OpenAI’s $1 trillion dream only works “if AGI is imminent,” which sounds like a joke, but still, retail is buying it.

Anthropic, built by ex-OpenAI staff, hit $350 billion last November. The company is marketed as the “safe AI” play; fewer headlines, more model efficiency, and tighter spending. Microsoft and Nvidia backed it.

But no one’s lining up to buy boring. The real show is always gonna be between the boys, Sam and Elon.

Retail traders love Wall Street-Silicon Valley drama, but they’re betting on structure

IPO watchers think this whole saga might shift how tech companies raise money. Samuel Kerr said it’s a break from the trend of staying private longer.

Back then, companies wanted to protect IP from reporting requirements. Now, the AI arms race needs money. And staying private doesn’t pay for 100,000 GPUs. That’s why these IPOs are finally happening.

Matthieu Wiltz, co-head of EMEA at JPMorgan, said there’s “strong demand from the market.” They’ve seen a 47% increase in deal value despite the chaos of global tariffs and wars. “There is an excess of liquidity,” he told Bloomberg, “so that’s why we sometimes need to refuse to do transactions if we think that covenants are not there.” But when there is structure, JPMorgan’s ready. And OpenAI has that structure.

Elon’s companies still run on vibes. Starlink might become a global utility. Maybe the space-based data center idea pans out. But no one’s holding breath. That “$1.5 trillion valuation” Kerr threw out for SpaceX? It’s only hype alone. And retail has been burned before. They remember the promises. They remember the earnings calls. And they remember the crashes.

Gen Z investors like Sam more than Elon. No one’s making TikToks about Starship engines. But they’re all using ChaGPT.