SpaceX and OpenAI’s IPO updates are strangely simpatico

Friends to foes to…IPO twins?

Elon Musk and Sam Altman must’ve both used downtime during their recent legal battle to do some IPO planning.

We’ve spent the bulk of 2026 waiting for more news about the two mammoth public offerings reportedly in the pipeline—Musk’s SpaceX and Altman’s OpenAI—and now, within a matter of days, both companies have major updates on the IPO front.

On May 15, Reuters reported that SpaceX was aiming to speed up its IPO launch date, with the goal of going public on June 12. That was a shift from its previously planned July debut date, which was reported back in April by the Wall Street Journal. Then, SpaceX filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC on Wednesday.

Musk’s company—described in the filing as “the only company building the integrated hardware and software infrastructure of the future across space, connectivity, and AI”—plans to list under the ticker symbol SPCX on Nasdaq. According to CNBC, SpaceX will kick off its roadshow on June 8.

And look at that: On May 20, the Journal reported OpenAI has plans to confidentially file an IPO prospectus with regulators as soon as Friday. “The goal is for OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, to be ready to go public as early as September,” the WSJ said, though the people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Journal noted “the plans remain fluid and could still change.”

Say what you will: Musk and Altman are more in sync than you’d think. Gargantuan IPOs slated for the same year, with major updates revealed just days apart? How sweet.

Of course, the timing isn’t fully coincidental. OpenAI faced a roadblock in its quest to go public due to its legal battle with Musk, a former backer of the company. Though OpenAI won that fight earlier this week, Musk “has said he plans to appeal the verdict,” the WSJ reported.

Should both IPOs go through in 2026, it’ll add up to a landmark year for public offerings.

“Any one of the potential hyper jumbo IPOs that are rumored to be out there…any one of them could have gone public in any market,” Mark Schwartz, EY’s IPO and SPAC advisory leader, previously told CFO Brew, not commenting on SpaceX or OpenAI specifically.

The fact that major IPOs of any kind are in the works “is a reflection of two things,” he explained: “One is, the benefits of being a public company have never gone away. And two is, the feeling around the IPO market is finally at a point where companies like that are not just contemplating, but are actively pursuing the public markets.”

In its most recent funding round, OpenAI was valued at $852 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, when news of SpaceX confidentially filing IPO paperwork came out in April, it was hard to focus on anything but the astronomical stats. In case you missed the headlines from back then: The company is seeking to raise up to $80 billion in the IPO process, with talks of up to a $1.75 trillion valuation.

The S-1 revealed that SpaceX’s “Connectivity unit made $1.19 billion in the first quarter. By comparison, the Space unit lost $619 million, and the AI unit lost $2.5 billion,” Morning Brew noted on Thursday.

If the SpaceX deal sounded like a moonshot to you back in April, now it might be time to get prepared for a moon landing.