WSJ What’s News - SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI’s Trillion Dollar IPO Plans

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

A.M. Edition for May 21. Wall Street is bracing for a historic wave of tech listings as Elon Musk’s SpaceX unveils its blockbuster S-1 prospectus. WSJ reporter  Becky Peterson parsed the filing and says its setting the stage for a landmark debut that could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Plus, an exclusive look at Anthropic’s mind-blowing growth as the AI-startup looks set for its first profit. And, new research shows MAHA-approved natural food colors may cause cancer and diabetes. Daniel Bach hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SpaceX and Open AI sprint toward blockbuster public listings. Plus, Anthropics' explosive growth pushes it into the black. These AI companies, a lot of them spend far more money than they take in. So the fact that Anthropic has grown so quickly and had this much revenue and that that revenue far exceeded, its costs, was highly unexpected. And Tesla says its fully self-driving tech is launching in China. It's Thursday, May 21st. I'm Daniel Bach for the Wall Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines,

and business stories moving your world today. Wall Street is bracing for a historic wave of tech listings as two of the world's most valuable private companies prepared to test the public markets. Yesterday, we learned that OpenAI is preparing an IPO filing that could land as soon as tomorrow. That news came as Elon Musk's SpaceX unveiled its Blockbuster S-1 prospectus, setting the stage for a landmark debut, that could make Musk the world's first trillionaire. Reporter Becky Peterson covers Musk for the journal and says this first look into the financial health of SpaceX provided quite a few surprises.

It's losing a lot of money. The company lost almost $5 billion last year, and that's on $19 billion in revenue. Its Starlink satellite internet business is doing pretty well. Starlink was more than $11 billion of its revenue. It also has this space rocket launch business that's about $4 billion, And then it has the AI arm, which it acquired when it merged with XAI this year. And XAI is bringing in $3 billion.

But it's also coming with a lot of losses. The filing also gave some major insights into what Musk expects for the future and for that imminent SpaceX IPO. Inside the S-1, there's this very musky in language about having what it sees as the largest actionable, total addressable market in human history. That means basically that SpaceX thinks it has the most awesome. opportunity ever to acquire customers to sell its products to people. So it says that it's TAM is $28.5 trillion. That's hundreds of billions of dollars from space enabled solutions,

trillion dollars in satellite internet services, and then $26.5 trillion dollars in potential AI business. It's really hoping that investors see upside on their investment, even though its financials today don't quite justify its valuation. Another key detail, Becky, says, is how much control Musk has at the company? He has these Class B super voting shares, which will give him control of 85% of the vote at SpaceX. That means that other investors, management, people who buy SpaceX shares on the market, they will have basically no say in what happens at the company.

You won't be able to remove Elon a CEO, and you won't be able to get anything. changed without his approval. That said, Musk's pay package is contingent on SpaceX reaching some pretty incredible goals. He has one billion shares that ride on his ability to make a permanent human colony on Mars of one million people. And it's just so out there that it's almost hard to believe. But they're saying, okay, if you actually do this crazy thing that you've been saying you're going to do, we'll reward you for it. And crucially, the S-1 filing did not reveal where SpaceX plans on listing or how much it's hoping to raise. Anthropics growth continues to rocket higher. The Wall Street Journal has viewed the AI

startup's financial projections shared during a current funding round, which show the company's second quarter revenue is set to more than double to almost $11 billion, up from $4.8 billion in the first quarter. That breakneck pace means Anthropic expects to turn its first ever operating profit this quarter. Journal Deputy Tech editor Bradley Olson says that goes against the industry narrative that massive computing costs hurt profitability in the near term. This growth is being driven by a lot of companies and businesses that are interested in Anthropics AI systems and tools and the ability of Anthropics AI to do kind of automated work, to take long tasks and to work on them for hours.

And Anthropics AI is able to do this. Other ones are able to do it too. but Anthropics has really gone viral since early this year, and a lot of companies are using it and trying it. And investors are taking notice. The figures could push Anthropics valuation past rival OpenAI. This as Anthropics, OpenAI, and SpaceX all race toward public listings that could value each company at over $1 trillion. We understand that Anthropic would like to have a public listing before the end of this year. and, you know, they're also being compared to OpenAI and SpaceX. You know, it was reported that both of them are having IPOs that are going to be sooner.

And so I think the big question that remains for Anthropic is, when is Anthropic going to do its IPO? What is the timing for that and what's expected for that? While Anthropic previously didn't expect a profit until 2028, executives warned the company could dip back into the red later this year as spending on model training ramps up. And demand for agentic AI is also proving a boon for Nvidia. This was an extraordinary quarter. Demand has gone parabolic. The reason is simple.

Agentic AI has arrived. That CEO Jensen Wong, who told investors how surging demand for data center computing has driven record sales and income for the first quarter. The results are the latest sign that the big tech companies are relying more heavily than ever on sales of hardware, especially silicon chips, to drive profits. And that investors require them to beat expectations. by wider and wider margins. On the earnings call, Wong said that so-called hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google,

will need to continue spending big to meet massive demand for data center computing, and that spending from governments and smaller enterprises will become a bigger part of NVIDIA's business. I have every expectation that's going to grow from here for fundamentally good reasons. This is the way computing is going to work in the future. And if they don't have to compute, they won't have the revenues. It is very clear. Compute is revenues. Compute is profit. Investors are also anxious for any sign that Nvidia is making inroads in its plan to sell its second-tier H-200 chips in China. They've been approved for sale by the Trump administration, but so far not from Chinese authorities.

Speaking of China, Tesla shares are gaining off hours after it said its fully self-driving tech FSD supervised will now be available there and in several other countries. It's taken years to get approval and follows Elon Musk's trip to Beijing alongside President Trump, Jensen Wong, and other tech leaders. The software is built on an AI-powered system that learns how to drive through millions of video clips taken from actual road experience instead of relying on pre-programmed rules and censors. Coming up, Rupert Murdoch's son James is buying Vox Media's assets and the Diet Coke loyalists who don't understand its fizzy relative Coke Zero in the booming sugar-free soda market. Those stories, out to the break. The Trump administration is awarding nine quantum computing firms, $2 billion in grants, including IBM and chipmaker global foundries. The deal also includes U.S. government equity stakes in the companies,

though officials did not provide details on the exact size or structure. We exclusively report that the administration's aim is to trigger a wave of American innovation. While critics argue the quantum sector is too risky for the government to make equity investments, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik maintains that the deals will ultimately benefit taxpayers. Artificial food dyes have long been linked with health problems. It's why the Trump administration's Maha initiative has been pushing food companies to switch to natural coloring. The FDA has approved several new natural food colors, and a handful of states have passed laws restricting the sales of foods with certain artificial dyes.

But new research from France shows some of these natural ingredients are linked to an increased risk of cancer and type 2 diabetes. One study was published this week in diabetes care, a journal from the American Diabetes Association, another was published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. WSJ reporter Andrea Peterson spoke with the researchers who looked at what more than 100,000 people ate and drank, including specific brands for up to eight years on average. The researchers found that both synthetic food colors as well as natural food colors were associated with health risks. They also were able to distinguish the risks associated with specific food additives. Some like beta carotene, which is something that can mean extracted from carrots, or red palm oil. It's often used in foods like

cheese, yogurt, and fruit drinks. Researchers are still trying to understand what it is about these natural substances that may lead to these health risks. When these substances are natural occurring in foods, they aren't linked to health problems. But what the researchers from France told me is that there have been several experiments that have shown that substances can behave very differently in the body when they are stripped from their original food source and processed heavily and made into an additive. And media investor James Murdoch is buying New York Magazine from Vox Media, along with Vox's news site and podcast network for around $300 million.

The deal is being made through Murdoch's investment company Lupa Systems. Vox Media said the deal is expected to close in four to six weeks. Murdoch is the younger son of Rupert Murdoch who controls News Corp, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and Fox. Rupert Murdoch owned New York Magazine from the late 1970s until 1991. Well, the newsrooms of New York Magazine and other media outlets no doubt covered one of the most durable pop icons of that era, Diet Coke. Diet Coke Break. Diet Coke Break. Diet Coke Break.

Since its release in 1982, from fashion to film, and even the president who has that little button on his desk to call for a Diet Coke, its drinkers have been loyal. But now one of its biggest competitors is not Pepsi, but its own sibling, Coca-Cola Zero. Journal Food Trends columnist Adam Chandler says Coke Zero is riding a fizzing zero-sugar soda boom that accounted for 52% of growth in soft drink sales last year. Coke Zero has benefited enormously from this rebrand and reformulation that's deepened its associations with Coca-Cola Classic. Some of Coke Zero's new popularity relates to taste, some of it is generational, and some of it's just pure marketing. But where Diet Coke's numbers have been, well, a little flat, Coke Zero's sales are booming. More and more consumers are looking for functional and better-free offerings. And Zero Sugar Sotas kind of sit in this category without using the word diet, which is a turnoff to some consumers.

And Adam says for Diet Coke purists, the vibes, on Coke Zero are ice cold. If you ever want to learn about a person, ask them where they stand in the Diet Coke versus Coke Zero Civil War. Every answer is its own Roarshot test, especially if you encounter somebody who doesn't drink soda at all. And that's it for this sugar-free but caffeine-fueled version of What's News for this Thursday morning.

We hope it's been refreshing. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sondra Kilhoff. And I'm Daniel Bach for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Thank you.