WSJ What’s News - SpaceX Files for What Could Be the Biggest IPO Ever

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

P.M. Edition for April 1. Elon Musk’s company has filed confidential paperwork with regulators to go public, with shares listed this summer. WSJ reporter Corrie Driebusch explains why that timing is critical for the company’s long-awaited stock market debut. Plus, Anthropic is scrambling to contain the fallout after it accidentally exposed source code behind its popular AI agent app Claude Code. Journal tech reporter Sam Schechner joins to discuss what this means for the company that’s built its reputation on security. And President Trump trades barbs with Iran over control of the Strait of Hormuz, even as he threatens to take the U.S. out of NATO. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Munes, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite in Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them, how and lowest demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. A special four-part event, streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus. The Supreme Court hears arguments on birthright citizens. The outcome could redetermine who gets to be an American.

You have people who have been relying on this automatic birthright citizenship for over a century. And so I think that there's always concern about how whatever they decide will play out in the real world. Plus, SpaceX files for what could be the biggest IPO in history. And NASA's planning to go where no one has gone before, or at least not since 1972. It's Wednesday, April 1st. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The Supreme Court heard arguments today on possible limits to birthright citizenship in the U.S.

As expected, President Trump sat in on part of the hearing, the first known example of a sitting president to attend arguments before the Supreme Court. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that would end automatic birthright citizenship for babies born to unauthorized immigrants or people living here temporarily. At least six courts have already said the order violates the 14th Amendment. WSJ Legal Affairs reporter Lydia Wheeler joins me now from Washington. Lydia, what was the Trump administration's argument here? So the Trump administration is arguing that the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was adopted to confer citizenship on newly freed slaves and their children,

not on the children of immigrants in the country temporarily or illegally. And so what they're really focused on is that the citizenship clause says all persons born are naturalized in the United States, and this is the key words, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. And the government argues that it's those words in the jurisdiction thereof that creates this condition that requires a child's parents to be citizens of the United States or permanent residents, both under the Constitution and federal law. How did the justices seem to respond to those arguments? So the justices across the court's ideological divide voice skepticism of the government's position that the citizenship clause was never designed to include the citizenship of people in the United States temporarily or illegally. And even Justice Samuel Alito at one point was like, isn't this a humanitarian problem? You know, he said that normally when you think about someone

who is subject to an arrest potentially because they're here illegally, that they wouldn't say, that they are domiciled or have a permanent residence in the U.S., but because of our ineffective immigration laws, he said, people have come to think of themselves as being permanent residents. There are people who are subject to removal at any time if they are apprehended and they go through the proper procedures, but they have, in their minds, made a permanent home here and have established roots.

and that raises a humanitarian problem. So it seemed like right from the start that the government was having a hard time. But then there was this notable shift kind of halfway through the arguments where it really started to seem like maybe some of the court's conservative majority was actually in favor of the president's arguments here. I think that there's always concern about how whatever they decide will play out in the real world. So you walked through the Trump administration's arguments. And what is the other side arguing?

Right. So civil rights attorneys representing the individuals in this class action are challenging the order. And they say that the Trump administration is trying to radically reinterpret what has been a pervasive understanding of the Constitution, as well as the court's own precedent and federal law for well over a century. And they say that it's trying to erroneously add this domicile requirement for U.S. born children with foreign national parents. Okay, guess we'll have to wait and see. That was WSJ Legal Affairs Reporter, Lydia Wheeler. Thanks, Lydia. Thanks so much for having me. A decision is expected by the end of June. In his first comments, President Trump posted on social media that the U.S. was, quote, stupid for allowing birthright citizenship. Anthropic is scrambling to contain the fallout after it accidentally exposed the underlying instructions it uses to direct its popular AI agent app Claude Code. As of this morning, Anthropic representatives had requested the removal of more than 8,000 copies and adaptations of its raw clod code instructions known as source code that developers had shared on programming

platform GitHub. WSJ Tech reporter Sam Shetner joins me now. Sam, an anthropic spokesman, said the leak didn't expose any consumer information or data. So just what was leaked here? What it is is it's the harness. If you imagine an AI system is like a horse, you need a harness to ride it, to direct it. You know, Claude Code is a tool that experienced developers can use to really accelerate their work. It does a large amount of coding on its own.

And Claude Code has been a driver of growth for Anthropic. It's something that has one Anthropic, a lot of business from developers. So if suddenly they're kind of giving away the recipe, even accidentally, for how they put that together, that's a big deal. And how did this happen? Well, what Anthropic says is that there was a packaging issue caused by human error when they were publishing a new version of Claude Code. In layperson speak, that means that there was a file that was a roadmap for all of the internal source code for Claude Code, rather than the sort of compressed version that you would actually run on your machine. So the company is now scrambling to contain this fallout. What is that stake for its business here?

Anthropic is potentially looking at an IPO. later this year. It recently closed a new round of funding that values the company at $380 billion. And, you know, Claude Code is certainly a large part of that equation. And this is a blow to Anthropic, in part because the company's brand has been that it's the AI company that's concerned about safety and that takes security very seriously. Even a simple mistake can undermine that image in the eyes of the enterprises that are buying its services. But it also reveals the trade secret of how they make clawed code work. Anthropics competitors now have a detailed roadmap for how to clone some of these features without needing to reverse engineer them. In addition,

there could be security issues. Once you know the source code of an app, it might make it easier for hackers or others to better manipulate the AI model into doing stuff that it's not supposed to do, like help with cyber attacks, or actually compromise the app itself, which could put users of of the app in danger. That was WSJ Tech reporter Sam Shackner. Thanks, Sam. Thanks so much for having me. Now for the latest on the war in Iran. In a post on his truth social network today, President Trump said the U.S. would consider a ceasefire, quote, when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Trump plans to address the nation on the war this evening at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. We'll be live streaming his comments on WS.J.com. Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the Strait of Hormuz remains firmly under its control and dismissed Trump's, quote, performative actions. Earlier, President Trump said he's considering withdrawing the U.S. from NATO.

That's according to an interview with a British newspaper in which he sharply criticized the military alliance's response to the war. His comments come amid a deepening rift with European allies after they declined to join military efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Coming up, around the moon and back is where NASA astronauts. are headed as soon as tonight. That and more after the break. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business.

your family and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. Hey, and welcome back to What's News. I'm Imani Moise, host of What's News and markets. Stocks kicked off the month higher today, as investors held out hope that the U.S. would wrap up military actions in Iran soon. Comments from the Oval Office suggesting a resolution could come within weeks

pushed all three major indexes higher. Nasdaq led the way with a 1.2 percent gain. The news wasn't as positive for the energy sector, which has been boosted by the surge in oil prices. Today, Brunt Crude, the international oil benchmark, slipped 2.7% to about $101 a barrel, and shares in ExxonMobil fell 5.2% shedding around $36 billion in market value. Exxon hasn't lost that much value in a single day since the global financial crisis in 2008. Egg prices are in freefall, which is good news, unless, of course, you sell eggs. This morning, Cal Main, the biggest egg producer in the U.S., reported a 53% drop in sales for the quarter ended February 28th.

Still, that decline wasn't as bad as Wall Street expected. Shares closed more than 5% higher. General Motors reported a nearly 10% drop in sales in the first quarter of the year. High interest rates and higher car prices kept potential buyers on the sidelines. It's a sharp reversal from this time last year when sales surged 17% as drivers rushed to beat incoming tariffs. analysts have been expecting car sales to be flat or down for the year. And payroll processor ADP reports the U.S. economy added 62,000 private sector jobs in March, beating economist expectations.

Most of the hiring was concentrated in education and health services. We'll get the government's official jobs report on Friday. SpaceX is planning to go public in what could be the biggest IPO of all time. Elon Musk's rocket company has confidentially filed IPO paperwork with regulators. and we've reported it's aiming to raise between $40 and $80 billion. Corey Dreebush covers IPOs for the journal, and she says the company is on track to potentially list its shares by the summer. One reason for that?

We have a couple other huge IPOs that are eyeing debuts later this year, and those are AI rivals, which are OpenAI and Anthropic. A lot of the same investors are going to be looking at putting money into SpaceX as OpenAI and as Anthropic. And if one of those doesn't go well and they happen to go first, those same fund managers might say, you know what, I'm going to put it in a smaller order this time. I don't think I'm going to buy as much of that risky stock. Once it's public, SpaceX's filing is expected to shed light on the company's operations, which range from satellite factories to launch pads. And finally, if all goes according to plan, later this evening, NASA will launch its boldest moon mission in decades. The roughly 10-day mission called Artemis 2 will send four astronauts around the moon,

as close as 5,000 miles to the satellite and back. It would mark the deepest human spaceflight since the last Apollo lunar landing in 1972. The crew on board the capsule Orion may become the first people to see parts of the far side of the moon. The astronauts will test all kinds of ship systems like life support, communications, and navigation ahead of even more ambitious plans for Orion. WSJ space reporter Micah Maidenberg says the stakes are high for NASA. This is a big deal. This is a high stakes mission for the agency, for the contractors,

and most of all for the crew that's going to be on board Orion. Neither the rocket or Orion have ever carried humans on board. So it's a big moment in a lot of first. This is the effort where the agency is hoping to one day send astronauts back to the surface of the moon and then press on to sort of bigger goals. with exploration, human landings on the moon in 2028. A moon base, Mars someday, but it all kind of starts with Artemis 2. After entering back through Earth's atmosphere, Orion is designed to splash down under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.

And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Imani Moise and Alexis Green with supervising producer Pierre Bienname. I'm Alex Ossala for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. listening.