[트럼프 스톡커] 재무는 엉망인데 몸값은 6000조인 새내기주들

Three AI Giants Racing to Wall Street
SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are accelerating their public listing plans faster than expected. Combined, these companies aim for valuations totaling roughly $6 trillion. Each firm focuses heavily on generative AI technology and hopes market funding will help them compete more effectively.

Wall Street is watching closely since individual valuations could push each company into the top 10 market cap rankings immediately after debut. However, a major concern looms: their financial fundamentals look remarkably weak compared to these sky-high price tags.

All three businesses are drowning in losses due to massive infrastructure spending, while profits remain minimal relative to projected enterprise value. Critics warn that relying purely on future expectations without solid revenue foundations could trigger bubble concerns.

SpaceX: June 12 Listing Target

Elon Musk’s aerospace company plans to go public on June 12 via NASDAQ. Originally, Musk wanted a June 28 birthday listing, but faster-than-expected regulatory review moved the timeline forward. The company will hold investor presentations on June 4, finalize share prices on June 11, and debut the following day.

Founded in 2002, SpaceX revolutionized space industry economics by making rockets reusable instead of disposable—cutting launch costs to just 10% of traditional levels. The firm plays a central role in NASA’s Artemis lunar program and merged with xAI (developer of the Grok AI model) earlier this year.

Market estimates place SpaceX’s value at up to $2 trillion, with expected fundraising between $70-75 billion. This would shatter the previous IPO record set by Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion raise.

Corporate Structure Details:
The filing reveals a dual-class share system. Public investors receive Class A shares with one vote each, while Musk and insiders hold Class B shares granting ten votes apiece. Musk controls 85.1% of total voting power, and corporate documents state no one except himself can terminate his employment.

Shareholder lawsuits are restricted to arbitration channels only, with limitations on where legal actions can be filed. The stated corporate mission: “Lead humanity’s expansion into space and ultimately build cities on the Moon and other planets.”

Goldman Sachs leads underwriting, joined by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan. Korean retail investors face restrictions—shares won’t be registered under Korean capital markets law and will only be available through private placement channels.

Troubling Financial Picture

The prospectus reveals shaky finances. Last year, SpaceX recorded $18.7 billion in revenue but posted $4.9 billion in net losses. First quarter results showed $4.7 billion revenue against $4.3 billion in losses—meaning quarterly losses nearly equaled total sales.

Starlink satellite communications generated $3.26 billion, AI operations brought in $818 million, and traditional space launch services contributed $619 million during Q1. Neither initial share price nor opening valuation appears in the filing.

The February xAI merger significantly expanded first-quarter losses. Attempting to catch competitors like ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and Claude (Anthropic), xAI poured resources into data center construction—spending $12.7 billion on infrastructure, more than Starlink’s entire annual revenue of $11.4 billion.

Space launch operations remained unprofitable through last year. Facing urgent cash needs, SpaceX signed a deal leasing computing capacity from two major data centers to Anthropic at $1.25 billion monthly through May 2029.

Approximately 20% of revenue comes from U.S. federal agencies including NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Related-party transactions with Musk-controlled entities appear excessive: SpaceX purchased $506 million in Megapack energy storage systems and $131 million in Cybertrucks from Tesla. Between early 2024 and February, xAI paid Tesla $731 million. Tesla is mentioned 87 times in the prospectus.

Musk’s Astronomical Compensation Package

While Musk’s base salary is just $54,000, his incentive plan reaches astronomical levels. If he establishes a permanent Mars colony and grows enterprise value to $7.5 trillion, he’ll receive 1 billion Class B shares.

At Tesla, a separate agreement promises up to $1 trillion in compensation if he raises market cap to $8.5 trillion and meets robotics plus autonomous driving development targets by 2035.

Musk chairs the board while appointing all directors, resulting in a leadership team filled with loyalists like President Gwynne Shotwell. Board independence is essentially nonexistent. While Musk and major investors face 366-day lockup periods, pre-IPO shareholders can sell up to 20% after the first earnings report—potentially pressuring early share prices.

Questions About True Motives

Despite grand rhetoric about orbital data centers and space colonization, analysts suspect the IPO primarily aims to rescue xAI financially. Industry experts noted in February that Musk cited “more effective orbital data center construction” as the merger rationale, but called this “a distant future scenario.” They believe immediate cash shortages at xAI drove the decision.

Musk founded xAI in March 2023 after departing OpenAI’s board in 2018 over disagreements about shifting from nonprofit to profit-focused operations. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT and dominated headlines, Musk responded by creating xAI and releasing the Grok model.

Grok excels at finding current information through integration with X (formerly Twitter) but lags behind ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude in creativity and workplace applications.

Suspicions about prioritizing xAI over space operations intensified after Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. He claimed OpenAI violated founding principles by pursuing profits despite his $38 million early investment made contingent on maintaining nonprofit status. He sought up to $134 billion in damages and demanded removal of CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman.

OpenAI countered that Musk knew about profit plans from the beginning and left when he couldn’t maintain control. They argued he launched xAI as a competitor and filed suit for competitive advantage. A nine-member jury unanimously ruled against Musk in just two hours, finding he missed statutory deadlines. The judge accepted the verdict and dismissed the case, though Musk vowed to appeal.

OpenAI Accelerates September Debut

After winning the lawsuit and reducing business uncertainty, OpenAI is speeding up its own public offering. Sources indicate confidential SEC filing submission is planned, with a September listing goal—earlier than the previously expected fourth quarter timeframe.

The acceleration appears designed to avoid falling behind SpaceX’s xAI and Anthropic. Wall Street expects OpenAI to pursue up to $1 trillion valuation. The company recently secured Silicon Valley’s largest-ever funding round at $122 billion.

OpenAI partners with SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son on “Project Stargate”—a five-year, $500 billion initiative building AI data centers nationwide.

Deep Financial Struggles at OpenAI

OpenAI faces financial challenges matching xAI’s difficulties. Analysts don’t expect profitability until at least 2030. The contracted data center scale is so large that even meeting internal revenue targets might exhaust all raised capital within three years.

After Google unveiled its self-developed Gemini 3.0 powered by custom TPU chips, CEO Altman issued a “Code Red” alert to staff. CFO Sarah Friar later warned executives that without faster revenue growth, the company might struggle to cover data center expenses.

Board members reportedly questioned Altman’s focus on expanding computing resources despite slowing business growth. OpenAI missed internal targets for weekly active users (1 billion by year-end) and annual revenue. The company repeatedly failed monthly revenue goals this year while losing enterprise customers to Anthropic’s Claude. Subscriber retention also proved challenging.

CFO Friar urged management and the board to improve operational efficiency, warning that current conditions make meeting strict public company disclosure standards difficult. She privately told colleagues early this year that massive spending and procedural issues meant the company wasn’t ready for listing within the year—conflicting with Altman’s aggressive data center expansion strategy driven by surging AI agent demand.

Anthropic: Profitability Uncertain Despite Progress

Anthropic also struggles with losses. Recent investor materials project Q2 revenue doubling to $10.9 billion with operating profit of $559 million—potentially the first profitable quarter ever. However, the company cautioned that rising computing and operational costs mean future profitability isn’t guaranteed.

CEO Dario Amodei and President Daniela Amodei—siblings who founded Anthropic in 2021 with fellow OpenAI alumni—left after opposing OpenAI’s profit pivot following Microsoft investment.

Anthropic gained attention with “Claude Cowork” threatening software industry displacement and the powerful but controversial “Mythos” hacking tool. Claude also played decisive roles in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Middle East military operations.

Like OpenAI, Anthropic targets second-half listing. Recent fundraising valued the company at $900 billion—five times the $183 billion valuation from eight months prior. Anthropic now approaches OpenAI’s valuation level after being worth $380 billion during February fundraising.

Google Fights Back

As generative AI firms march toward public markets, Google unveiled “Gemini 3.5 Flash”—a lightweight model with four times faster output than competing top-tier models while exceeding Gemini 3.1 Pro in agent capabilities, coding, and financial analysis. Gemini 3.5 Pro launches next month.

CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized cost savings: “You’ve probably heard stories about companies exhausting annual token budgets before May. If an enterprise processing 1 trillion daily tokens shifts 80% of workload to Flash models, they’ll save over $1 billion annually.”

Market Impact and Bubble Concerns

The consecutive listings should energize New York markets temporarily. Currently, Meta (Facebook’s parent) and Walmart rank 9th-10th in market cap at $1.54 trillion and $967 billion respectively. All three newcomers could immediately enter the top 10.

Underwriters expect to collect over $1 billion in SpaceX fees alone. As frontier AI businesses, these companies will strongly influence related stock prices.

Yet sustainability remains uncertain. Unlike capital-intensive semiconductors with high entry barriers, generative AI markets show enormous spending but minimal profits. SpaceX will serve as the crucial first test case for whether these massive valuations can hold.