SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI IPOs mean ASX ETF investors have decisions to make

With SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI slated to IPO on the Nasdaq this year, Australian ETF investors have two decisions to make.

First, they must decide what they think of Nasdaq-focused ETFs. These ETFs – (including our own ETFS Magnificent 7+ ETF ASX: HUGE) – will be impacted by these IPOs.

Second, they must decide if there really is some kind of AI bubble, given these coming IPOs will turn the Nasdaq into something near a basket trade on AI.

Decision #1 – is the Nasdaq more investible than the S&P 500?

It's too early to say how large these companies will be when they go public. But recent secondary sales and published forecasts put SpaceX at $2 trillion, OpenAI at $850 billion, and Anthropic at $380 billion.

Nasdaq-based ETFs have stolen a march on the S&P 500 the past 10 years. With each passing year, they take greater market share of global ETF inflows.

Why? They have performed a lot better and adopted a much more transparently rules-based approach.

Often unknown to non-specialists, the S&P 500 is not a purely passive index. It doesn't just take the top 500 largest US companies. Instead, it only includes large companies that have been profitable for a year. Even then, the S&P's index committee wields discretion.

This means unprofitable companies get into Nasdaq ETFs first. And it means that if their outperformance occurs in the early days of listing, S&P 500 investors can miss out.

We saw this with Tesla.

Tesla rallied almost 850% in the year before its inclusion in the S&P 500. But since inclusion, Tesla’s share price has risen just 80%. Most of Tesla's gains have gone to Nasdaq investors, and not S&P 500 investors.

Which leads us to the decision Australian ETF investors need to make.

These IPOs raise the possibility that what happened with Tesla happens again – but on a larger scale.

SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all unprofitable. Investor documents presented pre-IPO to the Wall St Journal suggest that they anticipate remaining so until 2030. This means they will be included in Nasdaq ETFs, but not S&P 500 ETFs for some time, despite their incredible size.

ASX ETF investors must decide if they want to own these companies. 

Decision #2 – is AI actually a bubble?

There has been a steady drip of commentary the past two years claiming AI is a bubble.

With the major AI apps – ChatGPT, Claude and xAI – all set to IPO, critics have a chance to put their money where their mouth is.

Where AI critics have a point is that the cash burn required to stay ahead in AI is enormous. Pre-IPO documents from Open AI suggest its cash burn is accelerating and will come in at US$200 billion-plus before 2030. OpenAI must become one of the largest global companies by revenue to operate on attractive margins with that kind of spend.

Another valid concern is increasing competition from Google’s Gemini and free open-source rivals. Both Anthropic and OpenAI’s IPO announcements came shortly after Google released Gemini 3.

Nevertheless, the claim that AI is a bubble has major shortcomings. The US tech sector’s forward PE ratio is falling (it’s now below its 5-year median) at a time that profit growth is climbing. Rising profits accompanied by crimping valuations is rarely, if ever, a signal of a bubble. And there is a vast distinction between something being expensive and something being a bubble. 

The high costs and lack of profits critics point towards also, arguably, miss the point. Every startup loses money before it makes money - this is a tautology. Google, Amazon, Facebook: each of these companies remained lossmaking for years. They burned cash to run competition to the ground and create global monopolies. Only after the dust settled did they figure out how to profit. The market believes the same could happen here again.

With these IPOs slated for 2026, the question is no longer hypothetical. ASX ETF investors who haven't formed a view on AI need to form one now.

About ETF Shares

ETF Shares is a low-cost index ETF issuer, based at the Macquarie University Incubator. We specialise in US-focused ETFs, such as the ETFS Magnificent 7+ ETF (ASX: HUGE) and ETFS US Technology ETF (ASX: WWWW)