SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and their giga-IPO dreams

MORE than a decade ago, before venture capitalists and buy-out barons began whipping out their cheque books, going public was the obvious choice for ambitious businesses.

A stock market listing offered startups both cash, courtesy of deep pools of capital, and cachet, conferred by a willingness to subject themselves to the scrutiny of millions of investors.

It was possible to attain a US$100 billion-plus valuation while staying out of the stock market spotlight. Lidl may have pulled it off with cheap groceries, Mars with confectionery, Cargill peddling the sort of stuff that goes into Mars bars, Gulf and Chinese natural resource firms extracting less-digestible commodities, Vitol and Trafigura trading these.