SpaceX vs. Anthropic: Which Is the Better IPO to Own?

The market is set to see two of the largest IPOs ever in 2026. Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) debuted in early June with a nearly $1.8 trillion market cap and raised over $85 billion in capital. Anthropic, meanwhile, plans to IPO this fall, looking to raise $100 billion at a $2 trillion market cap.

But which of their stocks will be the better one to own?

SpaceX

SpaceX has been on a wild ride since its IPO, and the stock now sits about 5% above its $135 initial public offering price and about 4% below its first day opening price of $150. The stock is largely a bet on Elon Musk and the future, given the company's ambitious goals. At the time of its IPO, management pegged its total addressable market at a whopping $28.5 trillion, and Musk claimed the company would become worth more than Earth itself.

At the moment, the company's largest and most profitable business is its satellite internet service, Starlink. This business is growing quickly, adding subscribers and seeing strong revenue growth, including 66% in Q2 to $4.3 billion, while producing adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $2.6 billion.

SpaceX has talked about taking on traditional wireless carriers with Starlink, but its limited spectrum, the technical challenges of using satellite broadband in densely populated areas, and the time and cost required to build a nationwide terrestrial network would likely mean it would need to acquire a mobile provider for this to happen.

The company's space segment is its smallest by revenue, but perhaps its most important. The company has demonstrated it can launch its reusable Falcon rockets regularly, but the key will be to do so with its massive new Starship rocket. If it can recover and quickly reuse these rockets, it would greatly improve the economics of putting payloads into orbit and open a world of possibilities for the company's space ambitions.

AI is ultimately the company's biggest opportunity, and this includes data centers in space. There are still technical challenges to overcome, but the company is currently working with Nvidia to address some of them. Meanwhile, SpaceX is seeing great cloud computing economics as it leases its compute, often at high prices to hyperscalers that need the extra capacity.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Anthropic

After a period of operating in the shadow of rival OpenAI, Anthropic burst into the spotlight as a leading model maker at the frontier. Instead of focusing on the consumer market, the company positioned itself as the leader in the enterprise and developer market with its long-term reasoning and coding agents.

Anthropic is particularly strong in developer-focused tool sets and agentic coding tools. This has enabled it to capture significant market share among enterprise customers that integrate its models via APIs. Its models are built on constitutional AI, resulting in more predictable AI behavior that appeals to regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and law. Meanwhile, it uses a pay-per-token API pricing model to align its revenue closely with compute costs, enabling it to scale profitably.

The company has seen tremendous growth over the past year. In Q2, its revenue skyrocketed 14-fold year over year to $11.5 billion. Meanwhile, its annualized revenue run rate surged sevenfold to $65 billion at the end of July. It also turned in an operating profit, generating operating income of $559 million in the quarter. The company is really starting to separate itself from OpenAI, which generated $6.7 billion in Q2 revenue and had a $12.3 billion operating loss.

According to reports, Anthropic plans to cite a $30 trillion market opportunity in its prospectus, which seems like a number picked just to surpass the one given by SpaceX.

The verdict

SpaceX already carries a pretty hefty valuation, and while Anthropic hasn't gone public yet, given the numbers being thrown around, it likely will too. Meanwhile, both will have market caps that place them among the largest companies in the world. As such, I'd view both as speculative investments despite their massive sizes.

If I had to pick one of these two stocks to add to my portfolio, I'd go with Anthropic, as it looks well ahead in the enterprise AI race. Meanwhile, the fact that it has achieved hyperbolic revenue growth while remaining profitable is impressive.

Geoffrey Seiler has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.