SpaceX could be the first $500 billion IPO, says Lerer Hippeau’s Eric Hippeau

Frank Holland (Correspondent) 00:00.270

let's bring in lair lehrer hippo partner eric hippo to discuss what he expects for the year ahead eric clearly there's plenty of companies ready but do you really believe this is going to be a year of unlock in the public markets given how easy it's been for these companies to

Frank Holland (Correspondent) 00:16.990

raise capital privately and put their own values on things

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 00:21.670

well we we good morning we we always hope that this is going to be the next year but this year there are some really good signs the IPO market as you mentioned is doing really well there's there's you know the backlog is not going to be cleared all at once but this is the best

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 00:39.560

this year has been the best year for IPO since twenty twenty one and there's good signs to say that it's getting over to twenty twenty six

Frank Holland (Correspondent) 00:48.190

and do you think that the AI related companies can actually get big valuation increases if they if they go public here or have they already kind of front loaded a lot of that i mean even you know we talked about open AI raising capital at an eight hundred billion dollar

Frank Holland (Correspondent) 01:04.750

valuation that's bigger than all but a dozen public companies right

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 01:08.230

now yes so you know we we do live in some sort of a fantasy world when it comes to AI valuations and you know we're early stage investors and we feel it at the very early stages as well the the kinds of valuations that are being given to companies in in a private market today in

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 01:24.430

the AI field mean that there's going to be dozens if not hundreds of companies that are going to be worth you know ten or more billion dollars that is not realistic however there will be some big companies that will emerge out this i suspect however that the first five hundred

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 01:42.350

billion dollar IPO will not be an II company but will be spacex

Kelly Evans (Anchor) 01:47.070

eric you you just took the question right out of my mouth because next year is poised to be a big year in terms of some big offerings whether it's and i know this is still speculation but open AI or android industries a number of others but spacex a possible one and a half

Kelly Evans (Anchor) 01:58.950

trillion dollar offering is the public market ready for that

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 02:04.230

i i believe so i think i think space so if if this year was the the year for AI the the year for infrastructure investing in power and energy was also the year that we saw robo taxis and robotics and automation starting to take center stage i believe that next year will be the

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 02:22.270

the year of space but that's the next big frontier we're talking about putting data standards in space we're talking about the next warfare to be done in space so there's tremendous amount of activity going on in space with potentially huge rewards spacex is extremely well

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 02:39.710

positioned if not in a unique position to capitalize on this

Kelly Evans (Anchor) 02:44.550

i would argue that it gets at an even broader trend here too which is this idea of not only industrial AI but AI enabled hardware which we're seeing both in space and on earth your thoughts

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 02:55.590

yes that's that's a big change because what's happening in robotics making commoditized components so in other words components that are very cheap to produce and very cheap very easy to to get and we're putting an AI brain on them and we're making and we're training them with

Eric Hippeau (Partner) 03:13.590

visuals it's much so much easier to deploy them to retrain them for new tasks robotaxis are really really good idea a really good example of this both waymo and tesla you know are unleashing these driverless cars that are enabled by AI and are much safer than human drivers