pfp Advisory: "Are mega IPOs a harbinger of things to come?"

Fund manager Christoph Frank examines the planned mega-IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI and explores whether they signal that the markets are overheating.

June 8, 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 colossal overvaluation? Perhaps even an upper turning point for a hopelessly overheated overall market?

Speculative bubbles have fascinated me ever since I became active in the stock market. For personal reasons, because I experienced one of the biggest bubbles in stock market history—the New Economy bubble at the turn of the millennium—firsthand and with my own money on the line. But also as a “field of research” for visions of the future, collective illusion, mass psychology, irrationality, euphoria (and disillusionment after the bubble bursts). While bubbles ultimately result in losses for many investors, they are not entirely pointless: they are also phases of experimentation and channel capital into new technologies such as railroads, the internet, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The problem with speculative bubbles, as former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke aptly analyzed in my view, is that they can usually only be proven beyond a doubt in hindsight, whereas contemporaries are practically unable to recognize them in advance. (Provided, of course, that 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, but should instead cushion the impact of a burst bubble.

Personally, however, I already see some parallels between current stock market activity and the dot-com bubble around the year 2000. Then as now, the scale is becoming increasingly massive: SpaceX is aiming for a market capitalization of approximately $1.75 trillion in its IPO on Friday—only slightly less than the combined market value of all DAX-listed companies at present. Galactic! Estimates for the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI this fall are also well beyond the $1 trillion mark. Relative to estimated annual revenues of roughly $20 billion to a maximum of $50 billion, these companies would thus be extremely highly valued, with revenue multiples ranging from 20 to 90.

It is unclear at this point when these companies will reach profitability on a sustainable basis. (For this reason, some index providers are looking to change their rules ahead of SpaceX’s IPO to allow unprofitable companies to be included in the index in the future.) I view the fact that these IPO candidates are in the red critically because it undermines an important line of argument: that the market leaders (such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, or Nvidia) are not burning through cash, unlike some of their hyped counterparts in 1999/2000, but are generating strong and sustainable cash flows.

Despite Bernanke’s warning that speculative bubbles cannot be identified with any degree of certainty in advance, investors can still weigh the pros and cons. In addition to the extreme valuations already mentioned, the following factors, among others, point to the existence of a bubble: The dominant narratives focus solely on AI and space travel (just as in 2000, they focused solely on “TMT,” i.e., technology, media, and telecommunications). The hype is certainly being ramped up (“new era”). The SpaceX IPO is specifically targeting an unusually large number of retail investors (amplifying the “fear of missing out”). The IPOs are expected to absorb well over $100 billion in new capital (possibly also via reallocations from existing public companies, which worsens the ratio of supply to demand for shares). An argument against a bubble is that the new public companies sell real products or services and hold compelling positions in markets presumed to be growing rapidly (AI and space travel).

Consequently, rather than the dot-com bubble around 2000, the period following Google’s 2004 IPO could serve as an alternative “blueprint”—a period that, contrary to fears of a speculative bubble at the time, was followed by several very strong years for stocks leading up to 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 speculative bubble across the board, although initial signs of one are already visible in submarkets such as the technology sector. While the artificial shortages surrounding the SpaceX IPO could generate strong demand in the short term 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 set to expire fairly quickly. To what extent this scenario is (still) attractive is something every investor must decide for themselves (especially depending on their investment horizon).