There’s something curious happening in the world of high-profile tech companies. The biggest names in artificial intelligence and aerospace are suddenly all racing to go public at the same time. SpaceX wants to raise $75 billion at a valuation that could hit $2 trillion. Anthropic just filed confidentially for its IPO and is expected to be valued around $1 trillion. OpenAI is also in the mix. That’s a lot of billionaires created in a very short window.
Economists at TS Lombard are throwing up a warning flag, and honestly, their reasoning makes a lot of sense. They’re pointing out that when company insiders and early investors suddenly want to sell their stock to the public, it’s often because they think the market is at or near its peak. It’s a classic case of knowing something that regular investors might not.
The data backs this up. IPO activity spiked in the years leading up to the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and it also spiked in the years before the 2022 bear market. Now we’re seeing history repeat itself, except this time the offerings are bigger than ever. According to Renaissance Capital, firms have already raised a collective $28.8 billion in 2026, which is a staggering 144% increase compared to the same period last year.
Dario Perkins, an economist at TS Lombard, put it rather bluntly in a note to clients. He asked the question on everyone’s mind: if AI is really going to transform the world the way these companies claim, why are they suddenly so eager to share the wealth with everyday investors? It’s a fair point. When insiders have conviction that the best is yet to come, they typically hold onto their shares. When they rush for the exit, that tells you something.
There’s also the lock-up period issue to consider. In the late 1990s, many lock-up periods expired between October 1999 and April 2000, right around when the dot-com bubble peaked. Perkins cited research from a 2001 NBER study showing that insiders timed their exits remarkably well. They knew exactly when public investors were overvaluing the business, and they got out while the getting was good.
SpaceX will sell a relatively small amount of stock to the public initially, with more shares becoming available as lock-up periods expire in phases. That structure gives insiders plenty of time to gauge the market and make calculated decisions about when to sell. Regular investors, on the other hand, are often buying at the very top.
Perkins also highlighted some of the more eyebrow-raising details from SpaceX’s S-1 filing, including ambitions to put data centers on the moon, mine asteroids, and establish a small community on Mars. He called it hubris, and he’s not wrong. When companies start promising pie-in-the-sky futures right before going public, it’s worth asking whether the business model is being oversold to generate excitement and demand for the IPO.
Another concern is what happens to market liquidity when all these hot new AI stocks start trading. Investors hungry for a piece of the next big thing will likely sell other holdings to free up cash for these offerings. That could create some ugly ripple effects across the broader market.
The pattern is hard to ignore. Whenever there’s a wave ofmega-IPOs from the biggest names in tech, it’s worth asking who really benefits. The companies and their early investors absolutely do. The question for everyone else is whether they’re buying into something real or just helping insiders lock in their gains.
The market has a long memory, and history suggests when everyone wants in on the action at once, it’s usually time to step back and ask some hard questions.
