ETF Edge - Sam Altman on OpenAI's path to IPO, plus the tenth anniversary of Alphabet's restructuring 8/11/25

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Sam Altman joined CNBC and discussed his path to IPO and OpenAI's new enterprise push. We look at why Silicon Valley startups have been staying private for longer and why OpenAI needs to catch up in enterprise. Plus, this weekend is the tenth anniversary of Google's reorganization under parent company Alphabet. Analysts say a break-up could unlock new value.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ETF Edge podcast is sponsored by Invesco QQQ, proud provider of access to innovation for the last 25 years. Invesco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to ETF Edge, the podcast. If you're looking to learn the latest insights on all things, exchange traded funds, you're in the right place. Every week, we're bringing you compelling interviews, thoughtful market analysis, and breaking down what it all means for investors. I'm Leslie Picker in for Dominic Chu. The IPO market is back for now, and the crypto space is entering a new phase. Here's my conversation with Matthew Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital,

along with Nathan Geraci, president of Novodias wealth management. Matt, let's start with the IPO market. After a relative dormancy, it seems like companies and investors are really jumping in on this window of perceived opportunity. How long do you think we'll expect that window to remain open? Is this going to be reminiscent of the 2020-2020 time frame? I don't think we can count it. going back to that level, but I might liken it to actually 2014 to 2017 or 18 or 19.

We had this rebound following the great financial crisis. So I don't think we're going to go back to 2021 crazy levels. But I do think we see a possibility of just a return to normalcy, which is actually going to feel like a very busy market after the last three years. Yeah, we've certainly has seen that pipeline build up over the past few years, as you mentioned. Nate, the ETF industry has become very effective at kind of rapidly deploying new products to capitalize on different trends. Do you think we'll see competitors to the Renaissance Fund? It's been kind of the dominant play there for quite some time. It's certainly possible. I think it depends on if we continue to see this enthusiasm over IPOs.

You know, it's interesting. If you look since the April 8th market low, the Renaissance IPO ETF is up over 50% versus about 29% on the S&P 500. And to me, that's really reflective of the broader risk on sentiment we've seen in the markets over this time period. And I think what you see is when animal spirits are high, that's typically good for IPOs. And if IPOs are doing well, you may have some potential competitors enter the space on the ETF side.

The other aspect that I would mention here is that there have been some highly noteworthy IPOs IPOs this year. When you think about companies like Circle, that's up big since it went public in June. Corn weave has had huge gains. And I think when you have companies coming to market that are in areas that already have a lot of investor interest, areas such as crypto and AI, that's certainly going to help as well. But we'll see if anybody wants to jump in and compete with the Renaissance IPO ETF. Yeah, it really feels like for the most part, maybe setting aside circle that a lot of the IPOs are really B2B. They're not necessarily consumer names, which often portend kind of big

IPO cycles. Matt, do you think that trend continues? What are some of the next big IPOs that you think should be on investors' radars? Right. So I think we're seeing Klarna coming in the fall. That's been delayed a few times, but they seem pretty definitive about that. And I know Nate was mentioning in the crypto space, we do see several names there as well. We've got bullish this week. And beyond that, gray scale investments, Gemini, crack in rumored, maybe ripple.

There's several names here that we are watching out for just in these hot areas. They're seeing a lot of interest. Nate mentioned Circle, so that can provide a lot of fuel for the fire. Yeah, so speaking of crypto, Nate, similar to the push to market we're seeing an IPO, you're seeing a lot of what you call a boatload of crypto ETF filings. What does that mean and how does that differ from what we've seen in the past?

Well, it's interesting because the three major stock exchanges, so NISI, NASDAQ, and Sibo, they have all filed with the SEC for generic listing standards for crypto ETFs, which basically means that the exchanges wouldn't need to seek specific approval for each spot crypto ETF, as long as it meets certain criteria. So this would streamline the approval process. And that's important because right now, there are filings out there from multiple issues, or issuers for XRP,

Celana ETSs, Cardano, HBAR. We could go on down the list, but there are a boatload of filings out there. And the expectation is that the standardized crypto framework will be implemented, say, in the next two months or so. And so if and when that happens, I think you're going to see the floodgates open. We're going to see a wave of approvals, and you're going to see, again, a boatload of new crypto ETFs coming to market. Yeah, that certainly seems like a big catalyst there.

Matt, do you think we'll see more crypto-related IPO similar to Circle, especially around stable coins? Do you think we'll see some SPAC-related IPOs that have that kind of crypto focus? Sure. I mean, there's a saying on Wall Street when the ducks are quacking feed them. So, of course, Circle really accelerated the timeline of a lot of these crypto companies that have been waiting for the right time to go public. You bring up SPACs. We've seen a lot of SPAC activity, specifically targeting crypto treasury companies. But I will mention that with Bullish this week, it might be flying under the radar, but Bullish has a lot of crypto assets. So it's not really a crypto. Treasury company, but I mean, it's sitting on 2 billion plus of crypto assets. So we are seeing some activity there. Wow, yeah, no small number. Nate, how have crypto fund flows been looking? You know, does that, to you symbolize just the overall demand for crypto right now? And if they get kind of the institutional support, as you mentioned, with regard to the NYSC and NASDAQ, do you think that will help support additional ETF creation.

I do. It's been a monster year for inflows into spot crypto ETFs. About $26 billion is going into spot crypto ETFs overall this year, about 19 billion into spot Bitcoin ETFs, another $7 billion into spot ether ETFs. And if you look in July alone, investors put about $6 billion into spot Bitcoin ETFs and $5.5 billion into spot ether ETFs. And if you look at spot ether ETFs in particular, interest has certainly picked up recently. So eight of the top 10 inflow days since this category debuted back in July of last year have happened in the past month, including all five of the top days since launch. And Leslie, I just think the main story here is there is a very strong regulatory tailwind behind the space right now.

when you think of things like the Genius Act, which was recently signed into law, so that's stable coin legislation. The House recently passed the Clarity Act, which is a digital asset market structure bill that will now go to the Senate. The SEC unveiled Project Crypto, and we actually had SEC Chair Paul Atkins. He was talking about bringing financial markets on chain. And so I could keep going. I mean, the SEC approved incline creations and redemptions for spot Bitcoin. the need their ETFs. They clarified their stance on liquidity staking tokens. There has just been a lot of positive movement on the crypto regulatory front. And I think that's giving investors, especially institutional investors and advisors, much more comfortability in allocating to the space.

So I think the trend moving forward is certainly higher as it pertains to interest in these products. Yeah, that's something a lot of crypto enthusiasts have been calling for for a while, this idea of give us the regulatory rules of the road so we can get more institutional investors comfortable with the concept. Let's continue the conversation on fund flows, Nate. ETFs still on pace for yet another record year following Big July of inflows. Yeah, so over $700 billion has flowed into ETFs overall this year, including around $120 billion in July, which was the highest monthly total this year. And so right now we're on pace for somewhere in the neighborhood of,

say 1.2 to 1.3 trillion dollars in inflows, which would break last year's record of 1.1 trillion. And it's worth mentioning that historically, if you look, the fourth quarter of the year is the strongest for ETF inflows. And so it's certainly possible we can see some acceleration from here. And if you drill down just a little bit further, about 360 billion has gone into equity ETFs. There's been another $230 billion into fixed income ETS, and then the remainder spread across things like crypto, ETFs, buffer ETS, et cetera. There are a lot of categories benefiting. And I just think we're at the point now where if investors want to express a particular view on the financial markets, any view that they might have, they can now do it using ETFs, right? If they want active management, ETFs have it.

If they want crypto, they can access that through ETS, hedge fund strategies, option strategies. It's all available in an ETF wrapper now. And so I think, you know, it's been a pretty good year in the markets. We've had the balance since the April low. But I think regardless of what the broader markets are doing, there's now a place for ETF investors to go to express their views. So yeah, it's been a great year so far. Yeah, express their views long or short. They want to use it as hedging option or to kind of express a certain factor.

or a segment of the market, to your point. Matt, where are you seeing the money flow in the pre-IPO phase for private companies? In other words, what's the next big innovation bet that could impact the markets more broadly in the long term? I mean, the obvious answer is AI. I think a company just has to bring out its hat and then get a billion dollars in that space.

It's just crazy. So we do see that leading, I mean, it's a good thing in the long run. in the long run, it'll lead to IPOs maybe by the end of the decade, 2028, 2029, we might get an open AI IPO. But it is more than just those big names. I think we're seeing a lot of companies that are going public that people don't even realize our AI companies. Heartflow last week, for example.

So not just these LLMs, but there's companies that are integrating AI into all of their solution throughout the tech stack. Figma, another perfect example of that. So, you know, a lot of fun flows going into AI, and I think we'll eventually and are currently seeing the IPO results of that. That does it for ETF Edge, the podcast. Thanks for listening. Join us again next week or head toETFedge.c.com. How does InvescoQQQ rethink possibility? By rethinking access to innovation and the NASDAQ 100. Let's rethink possibility, Investorbiters, Inc.