SpaceX is rocketing up the rankings of aerospace and defense companies. It’s the most valuable aerospace and defense stock in the Western World, topping even the likes of Boeing and Raytheon Technologies.

Thursday, CNBC reported that SpaceX valuation hit $150 billion, based on a secondary sale of stock at $81 a share. SpaceX didn’t return a request for comment about the sale.

Elon Musk’s space company that pioneered reusable rockets is still privately held, but SpaceX still has shares that can be traded with sales arranged by the company or on third-party platforms such as Rainmaker Securities… Read Full Article

The big movers in space are struggling to get new launch vehicles off the ground, delaying other orbital projects and boosting Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the industry leader.

United Launch Alliance said its much-anticipated new Vulcan rocket needs more work after missing out on a hoped-for May debut. The problem is with propellant tanks in the vehicle’s second stage, one of which exploded during a test in March. More reinforcement is required, which means a trip back to the factory for refitting, then more testing, and then back to the launch pad. ULA CEO Tory Bruno is still predicting the rocket will launch this year…Read Full Article

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has abruptly halted the sale of one of its most sought-after assets: a stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.

Perella Weinberg Partners, the boutique investment bank that acts as an adviser to FTX, informed bidders this month about the pause, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing confidential information.

The halt came after several months during which multiple potential buyers assessed private information about the Anthropic stake, the people said. Semafor reported earlier in June that FTX had been shopping its Anthropic holding with an expectation of fetching “nine figures.”

Privately-held Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, has become one of the hottest companies of the current AI boom. Anthropic said in May that it had raised $450 million to support the development of its AI bot, dubbed Claude.

Buyers in the secondary market for shares in private companies have been actively seeking opportunities to acquire stakes in Anthropic, including at a premium, according to Rainmaker Securities co-founder Glen Anderson…Read Full Article

• Pre-IPO shares of AI and machine-learning startups in vogue

• Investors are bidding up OpenAI and Anthropic, Rainmaker says

The buzz around artificial intelligence has investors snapping up shares of startups on alternative venues, looking to find the next wave of technology giants before they even go public.

AI and machine learning have remained the most in-demand sectors every month this year, accounting for 25% to 30% of investor interest, according to EquityZen Securities Inc., a marketplace for privately held shares. On Rainmaker Securities, a platform that facilitates secondary stock transactions for private businesses, investors are paying up for shares of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, startups that are seen as leading the pack in AI…Read Full Article

The US market for initial public offerings looks like it’s finally coming back to life after 18 months of deathly quiet.

Shares of Cava Group Inc. nearly doubled in its trading debut on June 15 after the fast-casual restaurant chain’s breakthrough IPO was priced well above the initial range set by underwriters. While the stock price has slipped a bit from its early surge, it still remains up about 84%.

Now, a trio of companies are preparing to follow Cava’s lead and tap the public markets this week. All told, about $1.5 billion is expected to be raised in IPOs on US exchanges in June, marking the first consecutive months with more than $1 billion sold since last fall, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“Everyone was watching Cava very closely, so that’s going to be a good starting point for the opening up of the IPO market for new companies,” said Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, which facilitates secondary transactions for private companies. “There are a lot of great companies that are private that have filed. The bar will still be high, but there’s clearly a lot of pent-up demand.”…Read Full Article

Following a listing by restaurant group Cava, the American market is hungry for IPOs.

The fast casual restaurant chain went public via an initial public offering (IPO) last week, with its shares nearly doubling in its debut.

And as Bloomberg News reported Monday (June 26), three other companies are planning listings of their own this week, with $1.5 billion is expected to be raised in IPOs on U.S. exchanges overall this month.

This marks the first consecutive months with more than $1 billion sold since autumn of last year, the report said.

“Everyone was watching Cava very closely, so that’s going to be a good starting point for the opening up of the IPO market for new companies,” said Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, which handles secondary transactions for private companies…Read Full Article

Klein, a partner at venture capital firm Revolution, hopped on the phone with Term Sheet less than two hours after market close and right before he headed off to a celebratory dinner with CAVA’s management team in Hudson Yards. After all, there was a lot to celebrate. After what’s been an extraordinarily dry IPO market, CAVA’s blockbuster IPO—in which shares rose 99% from market open to close to nearly $44—the Washington, D.C.-based fast-casual restaurant’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange offered a much-needed respite to the startup ecosystem: a glimmer of hope that exits are still within reach, even for unprofitable companies.

“I don’t want to overstate it, but it felt like a real break in the clouds from the environment that we’ve been in for the last 18 months or so,” Klein says… Read Full Article

SpaceX is the most valuable space company in the world—and it might offer Elon Musk the key to unlocking his empire.

It's hard to feel pity for the world's second-richest person. Musk is estimated to be worth about $180 billion, the combined value of his stakes in Tesla (ticker: TSLA), SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring Co., and Twitter, among other investments. The problem, though, is that all but Tesla are privately held, and therefore illiquid. When Musk needs money, his only option is to sell Tesla stock. That was the case from April to December 2022, when Musk was forced to sell some $23 billion in Tesla shares to keep Twitter afloat, one of the reasons the stock tumbled more than 50% during that period… Read Full Article

It’s the biggest venture capital profit haul that no one wants to talk about.

ByteDance – the Chinese parent company of social media app TikTok – is the world’s most valuable startup. Even at a valuation of $220 billion, down from a peak of $500 billion in the secondary market in 2021, it’s not even close. (SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, slots in second at $140 billion.)

For its investors, some of whom backed the company when it was still valued in the millions, an eventual ByteDance public offering would mean billions, and even tens of billions of dollars, in profits, instantly vaulting their investments into the ranks of the top VC bets of all time… Read Full Article

The brief flight of Starship, the world’s largest rocket, was fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, but the ultimate propellant for SpaceX’s ambitious new projects is money. That’s why it’s surprising that CEO Elon Musk said his company wouldn’t raise more capital, despite plans to spend about $2 billion improving the vehicle’s Raptor engines this year.

Musk’s comment during an April 29 Twitter conversation comes as the secondary market in SpaceX shares is weakening for the first time, according to Greg Martin, a managing director at Rainmaker Securities, a boutique investment bank that specializes in private companies. After ByteDance, the company that created TikTok, SpaceX is considered the most valuable venture-backed company.. Read Full Article

Elon Musk's SpaceX is an impressive company, and an incredible story–maybe as impressive as Tesla.

And many investors would like a chance to own some SpaceX stock. Even though the company is privately held that is still possible. Interested investors might want to wait, though, as pricing could come down.

There are platforms for insiders and employees to trade shares of privately held companies. Glen Anderson runs one called Rainmaker Securities. "SpaceX, it's a name we've done a lot of trading in over the years," he says in an interview… Read Full Article

The Less Sophisticated and Less Efficient Private Equity Secondary Market Presents an Interesting Opportunity for Equity Traders  

If history is an indicator, the best investments are made in the periods of market lows and economic pressure. This is particularly true with equities, where buying shares in high-value companies when valuations are lowest provides opportunity for maximum potential returns.  

Take for instance the financial crisis of 2008. At the bottom of the market, the investors who took large equity stakes in quality public companies at low entry points achieved outsized returns when the market recovered…  Read Full Article

The global market for initial public offerings is showing signs of life as a rebound in the stock market has emboldened companies to test investor appetite for new listings, particularly in Asia. But a full-fledged recovery looks distant.

Roughly $25 billion worth of IPOs priced globally in March and April, nearly twice the amount seen in the first two months of the year when listings virtually ground to a halt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg… Read Full Article

For more than a year, investors have had little appetite for Instacart’s stock, available on the private market for tech shares. Now investors who may be hunting for bargains are starting to clamor for a piece of the grocery-delivery startup ahead of an expected initial public offering.

Over the past couple of months, investors who buy private company stock have increasingly looked to scoop up Instacart shares, Instacart shareholders and brokers who facilitate trades told The Information… Read Full Article

Venture capitalists and startup founders alike went into 2023 eagerly hoping for the return of the industry’s exit environment — specifically, the resurgence of IPOs.

After 2021, a record-breaking year for IPOs, everything screeched to a halt in 2022. PitchBook counted 296 venture-backed companies that went public in 2021, which doubles — or more — any other year prior. This plummeted to 28 in 2022, the lowest number recorded since 2009, amid the financial crisis… Read Full Article

At least eight businesses that went public through mergers with “blank-check” companies have sought protection from creditors.

It took only 10 months for Quanergy Systems Inc., a maker of high-tech sensors and software, to go from its stock market debut to filing for bankruptcy. Fast Radius Inc., a 3D-printing company, made it nine months. Online retail startup Enjoy Technology Inc. lasted eight-and-a-half months before it filed… Read Full Article

The blank-check frenzy that raised more than $245 billion over a two-year stretch has dried up, with just a handful of sponsors pooling investor money in 2023. 

“The SPAC party is over,” says Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, which facilitates secondary transactions for private companies… Read Full Article 

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"In 2021, over 1,000 IPOs were SPACs and the SPAC market was dead in 2022. There was a weakened stock market, aggressive interest rate hikes, inflation, fear of a recession, rising geopolitical tensions, and poor post-IPO performance. SPACs were somewhat of a Ponzi scheme to begin with, but they are likely to return when IPOs return. Tech IPOs to watch are Stripe, Databricks, Instacart, and ByteDance (TikTok)," says Greg Martin.

There was a surge of initial public offerings on the London Stock Exchange and AIM in 2021, with 123 companies going public. However, this flood became more of a drought last year, as adverse macro conditions and a sense of investor fatigue all but closed IPO markets in the UK and globally, according to KPMG’s head of UK capital Svetlana Marriot.

Historically, the IPO market has tended to hit the buffers following financial crises, data in the NSCI Indices annual review shows… Read Full Article

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