SpaceX Takes Flight as IPO Market Sees Orange and Blue Skies

Jun 12, 2026

While the city is abuzz with Knicks fever and the start of the World Cup, Wall Street was dominated by one thing… SpaceX’s IPO.

As we recently noted, SpaceX’s public S-1 filing has turned into required reading, and commentators have been busier than Stephen A. Smith in sharing their thoughts before the company starts trading.

As for the takes: Heard on the Street’s Telis Demos emphasized that while the first-day IPO “pop” is real, most upside goes to the select few who get shares at the offer price, not to most investors buying once the stock opens. He notes that waiting for the stock to be added to indexes “isn’t a workaround,” as SpaceX is selling less than 5% of its shares, meaning float-weighted indexes are not likely to reflect its $1.7 trillion valuation on day one.

Bloomberg’s Carmen Reinicke was more focused on timing, pointing out that the performances of mega-cap tech IPOs are choppy during their first year of trading, particularly as low float meets lockup expirations.

It is also fair to ask if any historical comps apply when dealing with “the largest listing ever, at the highest valuation ever.” And OpenAI’s confidential S-1 filing this week suggests we may get another potentially $1 trillion test case soon.

Meanwhile, The Information’s Dakin Campbell asked whether the “quiet period is dead,” pointing out that SpaceX and Elon Musk have been stress-testing the (un)written rules around IPO communications, including lots of public comments, X posts and even a prospectus update after new details of a deal with Anthropic surfaced elsewhere. It’s the kind of pre-IPO behavior that gives advisors more heart trouble than watching a Knicks fourth quarter.

Another governance trend worth discussing is Olshan’s read out in its mid-year activism report.

The main takeaway in the report, written by partners Ken Mantel and Meagan Reda, is that activists pivoted away from M&A-related demands (which dominated activity last year) towards pushing for more operational and governance changes, capital discipline as well as increased board oversight of AI. It also predicts that with SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all walking the IPO runway with atypical governance structures, investors and policymakers will have more scrutiny on “the optimal governance packages for new public companies.”

Have a great weekend,
GPP Team

ACTIVISM

Cravath: M&A Activism and Corporate Governance Q1 2026 Report
Cravath’s quarterly review discusses how company M&A toolkits are evolving as a result of government participation in dealmaking, the potential spoliation risks posed by AI-generated deal communications as well as continued uptick in activism campaigns in the U.S. Read More

Innisfree: 2026 Proxy Season Trends: The Fracturing of Shareholder Power
Innisfree looks back at key trends from this year’s proxy season, including an uptick in activists winning seats without officially launching proxy contests, the increased rise of passive investor voting and new policies and products launched by ISS and Glass Lewis in response to the evolving stewardship landscape. Read More

Reuters: Activist Jana Urges Fiserv to Sell More Assets, Refresh Board
Speaking at Wolfe Research’s annual activism conference, Jana’s Scott Ostfeld reiterated the firm’s desire for Fiserv to aggressively sell down assets and appoint additional directors with banking experience to its board. Read More

Reuters: Japanese Firms Field Record Proposals from Activists at This Year’s Shareholder Meetings
Japan continues to garner a lot of shareholder attention as 2026 has seen a record high in terms of activists submitting record proposals, with the majority submitted by foreign investors, including 19 proposals related to director candidates – more than the prior two years combined. Read More

M&A

Bloomberg: Latham’s Kelly Forecasts Private Equity-Fueled Second-Half Surge
Alex Kelly, global co-chair of the M&A and Private Equity Practice at Latham & Watkins, shared her prediction on the Bloomberg Deals show that dealmaking this year will mirror 2025, with large deals accelerating in the back half. Watch Here

Bloomberg: Apollo’s Kleinman Says Private Equity Lost Its Way on Deals
As borrowing costs have normalized, Apollo co-president Scott Kleinman acknowledged that private equity groups will “have to start capitulating” on valuations to adapt to a higher rate environment, but that the overall business climate remains strong with capital available for more investment. Read More

Financial Times: Intesa Gatecrashes Rival’s Bid for Monte dei Paschi with €30.6bn Offer
After Banco BPM announced its desire to acquire the world’s oldest bank, saying that it would “create a new national champion,” Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo announced its own surprise bid for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, in a deal that could create the Eurozone’s second-largest lender by market value. Read More

Reuters: GSK Boosts Cancer Portfolio with $10.6 Billion Nuvalent Takeover
In a potential strategic shift under new CEO Luke Miels, British biopharma giant GSK agreed to buy Nuvalent, which develops lung cancer drugs, in GSK’s largest deal in years. Read More

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

The Sidley Podcast: Navigating the Sweeping SEC Rules Proposed for Public Companies
Host and Sidley partner, Samir Gandhi, examines the impact of the SEC’s newly proposed rules designed to encourage more firms to go public by reducing compliance requirements, and how the changes could impact investor protections on their positions. Listen Here

Financial Times: How to Chair a Board in the Post-Governance Age
The FT’s John Foley traces how far apart U.S. and UK board governance has drifted, finding American companies are outperforming by loosening board norms while the UK weighs whether its stricter approach is a strength or weakness. Read More

Bloomberg Opinion: Corporate America Is No Meritocracy. Just Ask Women
Bloomberg’s Beth Kowitt breaks down the structural discrepancies between female and male representation across corporate American’s leadership, be it the executive level to the boardroom. Read More

The Information: How Nasdaq Turned Its Index into a Listings Weapon
Cory Weinberg reports on the benefits to the index methodology changes helping the Nasdaq land major tech listings like SpaceX, and its own performance as an issuer, which has seen its stock quadruple under the leadership of CEO Adena Friedman. Read More

IPO

CNBC: OpenAI Confidentially Files for IPO, Prepping Wall Street for Mega AI Debut
The long-awaited confidential S-1 was filed Monday, as the AI lab, valued at over $850 billion, joins the list of massive tech IPOs in the pipeline alongside SpaceX and Anthropic. Read More

TechCrunch: Eventbrite and Vimeo Owner Bending Spoons Files to go Public
Italian company Bending Spoons, which owns companies including AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, has filed a preliminary S-1 that could value the company at around $20 billion. Read More

FROM OUR DESK TO YOURS

Born in Baghdad in 1938, Oded Halahmy was a child when his family and other Jews were airlifted out of Iraq in 1951 as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, a mass exodus of Jews fleeing persecution and violence amid rising antisemitism. As the renowned sculptor recounted at a recent event at the Jewish Museum unveiling a new show, “Models in Wood,” Jews had been in Babylonia since King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the first Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE.

His father was a goldsmith and he began working first with gold and then with wood.

Rather than sever his ties, the experience deepened his enduring affinity of the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia. So-called Mizrahi Jews were ethnically cleansed from Iraq, Iran, and most Arab countries they had been living in for millennia, but that didn’t stop Halahmy’s love for the region. “I left Iraq but Iraq didn’t leave me,” the sculptor said. “I found my way back to Iraq through making art, through writing.”

He moved to Israel, studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London, and ended up in New York’s Soho in 1971 on Prince Street along with other starving artists in what was then a manufacturing neighborhood. “I searched for supplies between Houston and Canal Street in the evenings.”

He would cook Iraqi food for other artists in his neighborhood as they scraped by. “Dumpsters were always full of remnants from factories—old furniture, scrap metal, wood and paper—that I used to make mock-ups for my large sculptures.”

The collection at the new exhibit is from his earlier works from the 1970s and will be on display until year-end.

“Home is with me wherever I go, it is not the place, it lives in my heart. From exile to exile, Baghdad, Jerusalem, New York. Exile is home.”