Tom Lee says SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs could reshape markets

Tom Lee says potential IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic could add trillions in post-lockup supply, equal to roughly 5% to 6% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization. He argues the market can absorb the supply because family offices, pensions, and high net worth investors are underallocated to public equities and may rotate back in. Lee also highlighted tokenization, instant settlement, and blockchain-based asset borrowing as key themes driving Wall Street interest in crypto and AI.

Analysis

The market implication is less about headline dilution and more about who has to fund it. If the next wave of private-to-public conversions is as large as implied, the first-order buyer is not the S&P itself but the underweight allocator set: pensions, endowments, family offices, and crossover funds that have spent years chasing private marks and will likely need public beta to rebalance. That creates a surprisingly supportive tape for mega-cap tech if the supply is met by long-only rotation rather than forced liquidation; the pressure point is not day-one IPO pricing but the 3-12 month lock-up overhang.

The real second-order effect is a capital recycling event across the AI stack. A successful listing of frontier-model companies would validate the financing model for compute, power, data center REITs, and GPU supply chains, but it also raises the bar for every adjacent private AI company trying to come public. Expect relative multiple compression in late-stage private AI names that cannot show durable unit economics, while listed infrastructure beneficiaries with hard assets should see stronger bid support as investors seek “real” exposure to the AI capex trade.

The contrarian miss is that large supply does not automatically mean large sell pressure if insiders can synthetically monetize through borrowing and hedging. That reduces near-term market impact but creates a longer-duration overhang: if rates stay elevated or public comps rerate lower, borrowing capacity shrinks and deferred selling becomes eventual selling. The risk window is months, not days; the catalyst to reverse the benign absorption thesis would be a weak IPO aftermarket, failed follow-on demand, or a macro drawdown that forces allocators to stop rotating into risk assets.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Go long BMNR only as a high-beta expression of the tokenization/crypto-finance theme, but size it as a tactical trade, not a core hold; best entry is on post-news pullbacks over the next 1-3 weeks. Risk/reward works if institutional commentary starts linking tokenization to real settlement savings, but downside is fast if crypto risk appetite fades.
• Buy a 3-6 month call spread on QQQ or XLK to express the view that mega-IPO supply is absorbed by public equity reallocation rather than crowding it out. Prefer staggered entry after any initial IPO headlines-driven volatility; thesis breaks if the broader market loses liquidity and long-only demand disappears.
• Pair long IREN/related AI infrastructure winners against a basket short of late-stage private AI proxies that depend on fresh capital and rich secondary pricing. Time horizon: 1-2 quarters; reward comes from investors preferring cash-flowing picks-and-shovels over speculative frontier-model names once public comps reset.
• Short unprofitable software/AI-adjacent names with the weakest path to monetization versus long FANG/XLK if the IPO wave launches successfully. The market is likely to reward balance-sheet strength and penalize companies that need public markets to fund multi-year burn.
• Hold off on shorting the coming IPOs mechanically into listing; the better trade is to wait for post-lock-up supply windows and then fade weak aftermarket demand. That is where supply becomes real, and where the risk/reward on shorts improves materially.