SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs: What New Zealand Investors Need to Know

Three of the most talked about private companies in the world are about to go public.

The SpaceX IPO is expected for June 12th (targeting a valuation over USD $1.75 trillion). Anthropic has confidentially filed to the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) to go public and OpenAI reportedly plans for later this year. Some commentators are calling this a new 'mega-IPO' wave, and rightly so.

For New Zealand investors, it raises real questions. What does an IPO actually involve? Why would companies this large choose to go public now? And if these names do list, what could it mean for the broader market?

An IPO, or initial public offering, is when a private company becomes publicly listed on a stock exchange for the first time. When a company decides to "go public" and list on an exchange, it issues a certain percentage of the company's ownership, otherwise known as company shares.

The number of shares issued at the initial offering is known as the “public float” or “free float” and is the number of shares available to publicly trade on the market. The free float may increase if insiders decide to sell or exit their pre-IPO holding.

Companies go public for a few reasons:

• By selling shares to the public, a company can bring in a significant amount of cash that can be used to pay off debt or reinvest in the business.
• An IPO also provides an opportunity where founders and early shareholders can sell some of their shares, creating more liquid cash for the company to use to grow.

Whether it’s building new rocket boosters, training larger AI models, or expanding into new global markets, innovation is expensive. Going public provides the fuel for companies to scale their operations faster than they could as a private entity.

The IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are getting a lot of attention because they will give public markets access to companies that already have huge scale, strong brand recognition and major influence over the future of technology.

Large IPOs can have a powerful short-term effect on markets. They attract media coverage, investor demand, and trading activity. They can draw money toward particular sectors, especially if investors see them as a rare chance to buy into a major theme like AI or space technology, such as Rocket Lab (RKLB) which went public at USD $10 via SPAC and is now at USD $123 (as at 2 June 2026).

Your exposure to companies like SpaceX and Anthropic may be broader than you realise too, with other large, public companies already involved behind the scenes. Amazon disclosed a massive investment in Anthropic made up of convertible notes and nonvoting preferred stock, implying an ownership of at least 7%. Bloomberg has also previously reported that Google (Alphabet) has committed up to a USD $40 billion investment into Anthropic.

High-profile IPOs can come with high expectations. Public investors don’t just buy the company as it exists today. They buy a story about future growth. If expectations shift quickly, share prices can be volatile.

This is often seen in periods of underperformance after listing. When Figma launched hot - it nearly quadrupled from USD $33 to $142 on its first day; but the stock has since dived on fears that AI tools (like Anthropic's Claude Design) would make design software obsolete. It's been a rough ride with the stock falling to USD $24, down 27% since IPO.

When considering investing in these companies, another metric to consider is cash burn (a company spending more money than it's bringing in). Both OpenAI and Anthropic are spending heavily to train frontier models, expand compute infrastructure and build distribution. Neither has demonstrated durable profitability yet. As an investor, ask yourself: who keeps writing the checks, and most importantly - will this thing ever walk on its own?

S&P Dow Jones Indices (DJI) have officially confirmed these mega-IPOs won’t immediately enter their indices, with fast-track inclusion consultations declined.

Some other index providers, such as Nasdaq, have confirmed a fast-track inclusion. Changing its criteria to let these mega-cap IPOs skip their traditional waiting period and join in just 15 trading days with near-zero float, the previous threshold being 10% of shares publicly tradable. 

While S&P DJI were consulting on proposed changes to the seasoning period and a profitability exception, here's where things stand for S&P DJI’s inclusion criteria for the S&P 500:

• Market cap minimum: USD $22.7 billion (unadjusted)
• Profitability: Positive earnings in the most recent quarter and sum of last 4 quarters
• Seasoning Period: At least 12 months of public trading post-IPO

Once a company like SpaceX meets the relevant requirements, its index weight would still depend on how much of the company is actually available to trade. The S&P DJI index inclusion requirement for Investable Weight Factor (IWF) is 10%. With SpaceX’s float expected to be around 5% or less, its weight in the index itself will be much smaller compared to other companies with comparable market capitalisation. This helps keep the market orderly and prevents a stampede into a stock where there simply aren't enough shares to go around.

The concern many investors have is that these mega-IPOs would join a market that is already quite concentrated.

S&P DJI data shows that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 have grown to make up close to 40% of the index by weight as of March 2026. That’s high, but also not unheard of in historical standards.

The biggest companies in 1966 looked very different from the biggest companies today. Back then, the top cohort included names like AT&T, General Motors, IBM and Eastman Kodak. Today’s leaders include Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.

The table above shows that the S&P 500 delivered annualised price returns of 7.42%, even though the companies at the top changed significantly over time. While concentration has risen sharply in recent years, the market’s broad performance still depends on much more than just the names at the top.

Your exposure will move with indices and depend on which fund you’re in.

• Kernel’s High Growth Fund will have the most exposure. With over 98% in growth assets and around 44% weighted to US equities, it already holds names like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon in its top positions. These new listings will eventually slot in the same way, once they've met the index criteria we covered above.
• Kernel’s Balanced Fund sits in the middle, with around 60% equities and 40% bonds. It has meaningful US equity exposure, but the bonds allocation softens the effect.
• Kernel’s Conservative Fund (approximately 30% equities, 70% bonds and cash) has the least to be concerned about. Most of its US exposure comes via bond ETFs rather than equities, so the direct impact of these IPOs is limited.

Remember, your KiwiSaver investment is designed to handle exactly this kind of movement. The index does the work, and your fund follows – methodically and without emotion.

We don’t anticipate any immediate change in Kernel Funds. Our index-tracking funds follow the methodology set by S&P DJI, our index provider, we discussed their inclusion criteria above.

For Kernel Shares and ETFs investors, you won’t be able to access IPO allocations at the time of IPO itself - but you'll have full access once they're publicly trading.

IPO allocations at launch go primarily to institutional investors. Retail investors don't typically get access at the opening price, and that's the case regardless of which platform you use. Once these companies are listed and freely tradable on the market, you'll be able to buy and sell shares directly through Kernel Shares and ETFs, just like any other stock.

This is a moment to stay informed, not to change course.

Big-name IPOs generate headlines, analyst opinions, and no shortage of hot takes. But for index investors, the process is the point. New companies don't enter the S&P 500 because they're exciting. They enter when they meet a defined set of criteria. And until they do, your portfolio doesn't change.

Yes, market concentration among the top 10 holdings is elevated right now. That's worth acknowledging. But it's also not new. Concentration has been high before with different companies, the same dynamic, and the index has still delivered strong long-term returns.

The structure of index investing is designed for exactly this kind of moment – you don’t need to have a crystal ball or be able to predict which IPO will succeed. The proof is in the index.