Elon Musk’s SpaceX made the world’s largest ever stock market debut on Friday at a valuation of $1.77tn. It was also set to turn Musk into the world’s first-ever trillionaire.
OpenAI and Anthropic have also filed to go public sometime this year, each at valuations near $1tn. In a dramatic first, the US stock market is poised to be heavily oriented towards AI companies.
Millions of Americans are about to be unwitting investors in these behemoths. Musk has pushed for rule changes allowing SpaceX’s stocks to be quickly distributed into index funds, which had previously waited to add new companies in order to limit risk to investors.
Those funds hold people’s retirement savings and pension plans. Now the financial stability of many of us may be dependent on the whims of tech oligarchs banking on an AI-fueled interplanetary future – this despite experts warning that SpaceX could make for a particularly volatile asset and that the extreme wealth these valuations will deliver to tech CEOs poses a serious threat to democracy. Oxfam noted on Friday that Musk could be about to be richer than the poorest 46% of the world population combined.
With many Americans worried about what the AI race will mean for their futures, we want to hear from you – what do you think about the SpaceX IPO, and about your savings being tied to the success of these AI companies?
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