Will OpenAI Be the Next Most-Watched Tech Stock After SpaceX?

After SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history, investors quickly began searching for the next private technology company capable of generating a similarly significant market event. OpenAI has emerged as one of the strongest candidates, supported by ChatGPT’s global reach, rapid commercial expansion, and a private valuation approaching the trillion-dollar level.

The comparison is compelling, but SpaceX’s post-listing performance also provides an important warning. Its shares initially surged well above the offering price before giving back most of those gains within little more than a month. OpenAI may become the next highly anticipated technology stock, but sustained public-market performance will depend on its revenue quality, compute costs, profitability path, governance, and final IPO valuation—not on brand recognition alone.

Why Did Investors Turn Their Attention to OpenAI After the SpaceX IPO?

SpaceX’s listing reopened public-market access to a category of companies that had remained private despite reaching enormous scale. Its businesses span launch services, Starlink satellite connectivity, government contracts, and longer-term space infrastructure, giving investors direct exposure to a company positioned across several emerging industries.

Once SpaceX became publicly tradable, market attention naturally shifted toward other large private companies with global brands, strategic importance, and substantial capital requirements. OpenAI fits that profile more closely than most candidates because it operates at the center of the artificial intelligence investment cycle.

OpenAI also offers a different type of scarcity. Investors can already gain indirect AI exposure through chipmakers, cloud providers, data-center operators, and diversified technology companies, but there are few publicly traded businesses whose core identity is a frontier-model platform.

The company’s IPO preparations have strengthened its position as a leading candidate. OpenAI confirmed that it confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2026, formally beginning the regulatory process for a potential public offering.

How Close Is OpenAI to Going Public?

OpenAI has entered the formal IPO preparation process, but it has not yet announced a confirmed listing. The confidential S-1 submission allows the company to communicate with the SEC about its financial disclosures, ownership structure, governance arrangements, and risk factors without immediately publishing the full document.

Several essential details remain undisclosed. OpenAI has not announced its future exchange, official stock ticker, offering size, share count, price range, lead underwriters, or first trading date.

The next milestones will provide a clearer indication of whether the company is moving toward a near-term offering:

• Publication of the S-1 registration statement;
• Appointment of lead underwriters;
• Selection of an exchange and official ticker;
• Disclosure of the proposed share count and price range;
• Launch of an institutional roadshow and final pricing process.

Until those steps occur, OpenAI remains a privately held company preparing for a possible IPO rather than an existing publicly traded technology stock. OpenAI itself has said that the confidential submission gives it the option to go public sooner, but that it has not yet decided when to take further action.

Why Can OpenAI and SpaceX Both Command Mega-Valuations?

OpenAI and SpaceX receive unusually high valuations because investors are not pricing them solely on current profits. Both companies are being valued according to the probability that they could become dominant infrastructure platforms in very large future markets.

SpaceX represents launch services, satellite communications, government and defense contracts, and long-term space infrastructure. OpenAI represents frontier models, ChatGPT, enterprise AI, developer APIs, autonomous agents, and the potential computing layer behind future digital services.

The two companies also share several characteristics that are difficult for competitors to reproduce:

• Strong global brands;
• High technological barriers to entry;
• Strategic relevance to governments and large enterprises;
• Large and expanding addressable markets;
• Significant capital requirements;
• The potential to define new markets rather than compete only within existing ones.

OpenAI’s latest major funding round raised $122 billion and placed the company at a post-money valuation of $852 billion, reinforcing expectations that a future IPO could rank among the largest technology listings ever.

These valuations also increase the standard of performance expected after listing. When a company’s price already reflects years of growth, even a modest slowdown in revenue, margins, execution, or capital efficiency can produce a significant market reassessment.

How Do OpenAI and SpaceX Differ as Businesses?

OpenAI and SpaceX are both technology leaders with substantial infrastructure requirements, but their revenue models and risk profiles are fundamentally different.

OpenAI combines software-platform economics with infrastructure-heavy spending. ChatGPT subscriptions, enterprise products, and APIs resemble scalable software, but every additional workload still consumes computing resources.

The central question is whether unit inference costs can fall faster than usage grows. If that happens, OpenAI could achieve the operating leverage associated with premium software businesses. If computing expenses remain closely tied to revenue, the company may be valued more like a capital-intensive infrastructure provider.

SpaceX is more physically asset-intensive. Its rockets, satellites, factories, ground systems, and launch infrastructure require long development cycles, but its commercial contracts and subscriber revenues are more directly connected to deployed capacity.

How Could SpaceX’s Post-IPO Price Performance Affect OpenAI?

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share and began trading publicly in June 2026. The offering raised $75 billion and initially valued the company at approximately $1.77 trillion.

Strong demand pushed the stock to a post-IPO high of $225.64, representing a gain of about 67% from the offering price. However, the rally reversed rapidly. On July 15, the shares traded as low as $132.28 before closing at $135.27, only slightly above the IPO price.

The roughly 41% decline from the post-IPO high shows how quickly scarcity premiums and initial enthusiasm can fade. Reuters attributed the reversal to a combination of profit-taking, valuation reassessment, heavily bullish positioning, concerns about debt-funded technology spending, and limited near-term catalysts.

This matters for OpenAI because public markets often evaluate major IPOs in two stages. The first stage is driven by brand recognition, scarcity, and long-term narratives. The second begins when investors demand evidence that revenue, profit, cash flow, and operating progress can support the initial valuation.

SpaceX’s volatility does not mean OpenAI must delay its IPO. It may, however, make institutional investors and underwriters more cautious about accepting a valuation close to $1 trillion without detailed financial evidence.

OpenAI could respond by lowering its target valuation, selling fewer shares, waiting for stronger market conditions, or providing more extensive disclosures around revenue growth, compute commitments, and the path to profitability.

Why Could OpenAI Attract More Retail Attention Than SpaceX?

OpenAI has a closer relationship with ordinary consumers. ChatGPT is already used for writing, coding, research, education, search, productivity, content creation, and enterprise knowledge work.

This familiarity could make the OpenAI investment narrative easier to understand. Many investors may find it difficult to evaluate rocket reusability, launch economics, or satellite-network capacity, but they can directly observe how AI tools affect daily work and information access.

OpenAI also operates across several layers of the market. ChatGPT creates consumer awareness, enterprise products support organizational adoption, and APIs connect the company to developers and third-party applications.

That structure could strengthen its platform narrative and broaden investor interest. An OpenAI IPO might attract consumers who already use ChatGPT, institutions seeking direct AI exposure, and developers familiar with the company’s ecosystem.

However, familiarity with a product is not the same as understanding its valuation. Using ChatGPT does not reveal OpenAI’s margins, cash consumption, customer-acquisition costs, infrastructure obligations, or the profitability of different business segments.

Retail attention could therefore make OpenAI one of the most actively discussed stocks after listing, but lasting performance would still depend on financial execution.

What Valuation Risks Does OpenAI Face That SpaceX Does Not?

OpenAI’s most distinctive valuation risk is the cost of serving users. Frontier AI models require substantial computing resources during both training and inference, meaning higher usage can increase revenue and expenses at the same time.

If infrastructure efficiency improves and the cost per workload declines, OpenAI could demonstrate the scale economics expected from a software platform. If compute spending continues rising alongside revenue, investors may apply a lower valuation multiple.

Competition is another important risk. Anthropic, Google, open-source developers, and other model providers continue to improve performance while reducing prices. Enterprise customers may increasingly adopt multi-model strategies instead of relying on one provider.

This could limit OpenAI’s pricing power and force the company to compete on reliability, security, data controls, integrations, developer tools, and total deployment cost rather than model capability alone.

Governance may also affect public-market pricing. OpenAI’s commercial business is structured as OpenAI Group PBC and remains controlled by the OpenAI Foundation. The Foundation continues to control the Group and holds conventional equity alongside other stockholders.

Prospective investors may therefore seek clarity on voting rights, board authority, capital allocation, and the balance between commercial returns and OpenAI’s broader mission.

These risks differ from SpaceX’s major uncertainties, which are more closely linked to engineering execution, manufacturing, launch operations, regulation, infrastructure deployment, and long-duration project development.

Could OpenAI Become the Next Most-Watched Tech Stock?

OpenAI has many of the characteristics needed to become one of the most closely followed technology stocks after SpaceX:

• A globally recognized consumer product;
• Direct exposure to the AI investment theme;
• A private valuation of $852 billion;
• Strong institutional and retail interest;
• Commercial products serving consumers, enterprises, and developers;
• A formal IPO process already underway.

Few listed companies currently offer direct exposure to a frontier-model platform. Most public-market AI exposure remains concentrated in semiconductors, cloud computing, data centers, and diversified technology groups.

That scarcity could create strong initial demand for OpenAI shares. The listing would likely be treated not only as a company-specific event but also as a major test of whether frontier AI businesses can generate sustainable public-market returns.

Still, "most watched" does not mean "best performing." SpaceX’s experience demonstrates that a prominent brand and limited access can support early demand while also creating a valuation that is difficult to maintain.

OpenAI’s longer-term performance would depend on whether revenue grows faster than computing costs, enterprise customers renew and expand contracts, platform advantages remain defensible, and the company can convert technical leadership into sustainable cash flow.

OpenAI is therefore well positioned to become the next major technology-stock focus after SpaceX, but its success would need to be demonstrated through financial results rather than market attention alone.

Should OpenAI and SpaceX Be Valued Using the Same Framework?

OpenAI and SpaceX should not be evaluated with the same valuation model. Their industries, revenue structures, capital cycles, and operating risks differ too significantly.

For OpenAI, the most relevant metrics are likely to include:

• Revenue growth;
• ChatGPT subscription conversion;
• Enterprise contract growth and retention;
• API usage;
• Gross margin;
• Inference cost per workload;
• Capital expenditure;
• Cash burn and free cash flow.

For SpaceX, investors are more likely to emphasize:

• Launch frequency;
• Starlink subscriber growth;
• Government and commercial contracts;
• Satellite-network capacity;
• Infrastructure utilization;
• Capital expenditure;
• Operating cash flow.

Both companies require substantial capital, but the timing and nature of returns differ. OpenAI can release and monetize software products relatively quickly, although it faces faster competition and pricing pressure.

SpaceX’s infrastructure is more difficult to reproduce, but projects require longer development cycles and remain exposed to manufacturing, testing, regulatory, and deployment risks.

The meaningful comparison is therefore not which company has the larger headline valuation. It is whether each company can generate sufficient future cash flow to justify the assumptions already embedded in that valuation.

What Data Should Investors See Before OpenAI Lists?

OpenAI’s public S-1 will be the most important source of information before the IPO. It should provide a more complete view of the company’s revenue mix, costs, ownership, governance, capital commitments, and disclosed risks.

Key figures will likely include:

• ChatGPT subscription revenue;
• Enterprise and API revenue as a share of total sales;
• Paid-user growth;
• Enterprise contract size and customer retention;
• Gross margin;
• Unit inference costs;
• Data-center and chip-purchase commitments;
• Annual cash consumption;
• Free cash flow;
• Research and development spending;
• Share structure and voting rights;
• The relationship between OpenAI Group and the OpenAI Foundation.

The offering terms will be equally important. Investors will need to compare OpenAI’s proposed valuation with its revenue growth, margin profile, infrastructure requirements, and the pricing of other major technology companies.

SpaceX’s first post-listing financial results may provide an additional market reference. Reuters reported that investors expect those results in early August, after which the first phase of the IPO lock-up period is also expected to expire.

If the market remains comfortable with SpaceX’s high spending and long investment cycle, OpenAI may benefit from greater tolerance for capital-intensive growth. Continued valuation pressure at SpaceX could lead investors to apply stricter standards to OpenAI.

What Options Exist Before OpenAI Becomes Publicly Traded?

OpenAI is not yet publicly listed, so official shares cannot currently be purchased through an ordinary brokerage account. Before an IPO, market exposure may be available through private funds, employee-share transactions, Pre-IPO products, or instruments linked to the company’s estimated private-market value.

These products can differ substantially from listed common stock. Their liquidity, legal ownership, voting rights, settlement methods, access conditions, and exit mechanisms depend on the specific product structure.

Gate Pre-IPOs has introduced an OPENAI Mirror Note with a subscription price corresponding to an implied valuation of approximately $895 billion. This provides a way to observe or participate in changes in OpenAI’s pre-listing valuation, but the product is not an actual OpenAI share.

Its implied valuation also does not represent OpenAI’s final IPO price. The product may be affected by market liquidity, investor sentiment, dilution expectations, settlement terms, and changes to the anticipated listing schedule.

Before considering any Pre-IPO instrument, participants should review its legal structure, pricing methodology, exit rules, liquidity, maturity terms, and risks associated with a delayed or cancelled IPO.

Summary

OpenAI is one of the strongest candidates to become the next major technology stock after SpaceX. It combines a globally recognized product, rapid commercial growth, broad consumer and enterprise adoption, and a private valuation of $852 billion. The confidential S-1 submission confirms that a public listing has moved beyond speculation and into formal preparation.

SpaceX’s post-IPO price movement nevertheless demonstrates the risks surrounding mega-valuations. Its shares rose from a $135 offering price to $225.64 before falling roughly 41% from that high and briefly trading below the IPO price.

OpenAI may attract even broader retail attention because ChatGPT is already part of many consumers’ and businesses’ daily workflows. Yet brand familiarity and scarcity can only support the early stage of market pricing.

To become a durable core technology stock, OpenAI would need to prove that revenue can grow faster than compute expenses, that enterprise customers remain loyal, and that the platform can generate sustainable margins and cash flow.

OpenAI may therefore become the next most-watched technology stock after SpaceX, but the company’s S-1, IPO valuation, and post-listing financial results will determine whether that attention becomes long-term market confidence.

FAQ

Is OpenAI already publicly traded?

No. OpenAI remains privately held, and its official shares are not currently available on a public stock exchange.

Has OpenAI announced an official stock ticker?

No. OpenAI has not announced its exchange or ticker. Symbols used by third-party Pre-IPO products should not be treated as the company’s future public-market ticker.

What happened to SpaceX shares after the IPO?

SpaceX shares rose from the $135 offering price to a post-IPO high of $225.64, then fell roughly 41% from that high and briefly traded below the IPO price in mid-July 2026.

Could SpaceX’s stock decline delay the OpenAI IPO?

SpaceX’s performance would not directly determine OpenAI’s schedule, but it could influence investor demand, underwriter recommendations, and the valuation that public markets are willing to accept.

Will OpenAI automatically enter a major technology index after listing?

No. Index inclusion would depend on factors such as market capitalization, public float, liquidity, trading history, and the methodology of the relevant index provider.

Is Gate OPENAI the same as future OpenAI stock?

No. Gate OPENAI is a Mirror Note rather than an actual OpenAI share, so its ownership rights, pricing, liquidity, and settlement framework differ from those of future publicly listed stock.