FRANKFURT (DEUTSCHE-BOERSE AG) - Fund manager Christoph Frank shares his perspective on the planned record-breaking IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, specifically examining the arguments for and against a bursting speculative bubble.
June 9, 2026. FRANKFURT (pfp Advisory). Are the upcoming mega-IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI a warning sign? Are we already in the midst of a massive speculative bubble? Are these trillion-dollar IPOs the culmination of a gigantic exaggeration? Perhaps even a peak for a hopelessly overheated overall market?
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Speculative bubbles have fascinated me since I started active trading. For personal reasons, because I experienced one of the largest bubbles in stock market history - the New Economy bubble at the turn of the millennium - live and with my own capital at stake. But also as a 'field of research' for future visions, collective illusions, mass psychology, irrationality, euphoria (and the disillusionment after the crash). While bubbles ultimately lead to losses for many investors, they are not entirely pointless: they serve as experimental phases and channel capital into new technologies such as railways, the internet, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The problem with speculative bubbles, as former US Fed Chair Ben Bernanke correctly analyzed in my view, is that they can usually only be proven beyond doubt in hindsight, while being practically unrecognizable to contemporaries beforehand. (Provided one does not succumb to the hubris of hindsight bias.) Therefore, according to Bernanke, central banks should not even attempt to predict or actively combat bubbles, as this could stifle the economy too severely; instead, they should cushion the consequences of a burst bubble.
Personally, however, I already see several parallels in current market activity to the internet bubble around the year 2000. Then, as now, the dimensions are becoming increasingly gargantuan: SpaceX is aiming for a market capitalization of approximately 1,750 billion US dollars in its IPO this Friday - only slightly less than all the companies in the DAX combined at present. Galactic! For the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI in the autumn, estimates also exceed the 1,000-billion-dollar mark. Relative to estimated annual revenues of roughly 20 billion to a maximum of 50 billion US dollars, these companies would be valued at revenue multiples of 20 to 90, making them extremely richly valued.
When these companies will reach sustained profitability remains unclear at this stage. (For this reason, some index providers intend to change their rules ahead of the SpaceX IPO to allow non-profitable firms to be included in indices in the future.) I view the fact that these IPO candidates are reporting losses critically, as it weakens a key line of reasoning: that the leaders of this bull market (such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, or Nvidia) do not burn cash, unlike some of their hyped counterparts in 1999/2000, but instead generate strong and sustainable cash flows.
Despite Bernanke's warning that speculative bubbles cannot be identified with any certainty in advance, investors can still gather a few arguments pro and contra. Supporting the existence of a bubble, in addition to the aforementioned extreme valuations, are: the dominant narratives focus solely on AI and space travel (just as in 2000 it was only 'TMT' - technology, media, telecommunications). There is certainly a lot of hyperbole ('a new era'). The SpaceX IPO is specifically targeting an unusually high number of retail investors (intensifying 'fear of missing out'). The IPOs are expected to absorb well over 100 billion US dollars in new capital (potentially via reallocations from existing public companies, which worsens the supply-demand ratio for shares). Arguing against a bubble is the fact that these newcomers sell real products or services and hold compelling positions in presumably high-growth markets (AI and space travel).
Consequently, the development following the Google IPO in 2004 could serve as an alternative 'blueprint' instead of the 2000 internet bubble; rather than the speculative bubble feared at the time, it was followed by several very strong years for equities until the 2008 financial crisis.
The most likely scenario for me at present is that the overall market has reached a very high valuation level, but we are not yet in the final stage of a broad speculative bubble, although the first signs of one are already visible in sub-sectors such as technology. While artificial scarcity in the SpaceX IPO could create strong short-term demand due to the bottleneck effect, this approach is likely to further worsen the risk-reward ratio in the long term, especially since lock-up periods for existing shareholders are reportedly set to expire quite quickly. To what extent this constellation remains attractive is something every investor must decide for themselves (primarily depending on their investment horizon).
By Christoph Frank, June 9, 2026, © pfp Advisory
(Deutsche Börse AG is solely responsible for the content of this column. The articles do not constitute an invitation to buy or sell securities or other assets.)
