We’ve touched on this hot IPO summer before, but with SpaceX now trading publicly, and Anthropic—and possibly OpenAI—set to follow soon, it’s easy to overlook just how massive this moment really is. A stark reminder came in Wednesday’s NCVA-Pitchbook Venture Monitor report. Unsurprisingly, nearly all the money in private markets is pouring into artificial intelligence. Yet one number stood out above the rest. When assessing the pending IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic, the report drops this bombshell: “Along with the SpaceX IPO, these exits will generate more value than all U.S. VC-backed exits since 2000.”

That’s an extraordinary claim—and when you crunch the numbers, it’s tough to dispute. SpaceX has already gone public with a valuation of $1.77 trillion. With both Anthropic and OpenAI expected to reach trillions, the trio could collectively land somewhere above $4 trillion. For context, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recorded just $70 billion in total IPO proceeds from American companies last year. Careful readers will notice some nuance in the wording. The figure excludes non-U.S. companies like Alibaba, and it measures “value created” rather than strictly liquid cash. Moreover, many landmark tech breakthroughs—the iPhone, Android’s debut, the launches of YouTube and Instagram—occurred at companies that were already public, so they wouldn’t appear in IPO data. Still, that was an eventful quarter-century. Among the highlights: IPOs from Google (2004), Tesla (2010), and Meta (2012), all now among the world’s most valuable firms. During that same span, LinkedIn, Slack, and WhatsApp were each acquired for over $20 billion. Uber’s $84 billion IPO in 2019 seemed astronomical at the time, yet it’s less than 5% of what SpaceX just raised.

One reason for this shift is that companies are staying private much longer. A modern-day Google would likely delay its IPO and debut at a far higher valuation. Another factor is the capital-heavy nature of AI training, which has driven labs into intense fundraising rounds and inflated their valuations. But the sheer magnitude of these public offerings still dwarfs anything the industry has ever seen—and it’s already pushing the financial infrastructure to its limits.