Future Stake

“Future Stake” – A cartoon that illustrates why a healthy IPO market is needed to ensure the wealth distributions of AI.

Every major expansion of capitalism has widened access for ordinary investors. Railroads in the 1800s, public equities in the 1920s, mutual funds after the Great Depression and online brokerage platforms after 2008 all pulled consumers deeper into ownership of economic growth.

But, the IPO market over the last six years has moved in the opposite direction. In 2020 and 2021, retail investors flooded into SPACs and fintech IPOs during the pandemic liquidity boom. Then rates rose, valuations collapsed and the IPO market froze. Since then, there has been a rise in secondary share buying of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. They raised enormous amounts privately through venture firms, sovereign wealth funds and secondary markets, while retail investors were largely excluded from participation.

Historically, IPOs were the gateway to public participation in transformative industries. During the dot-com era, individuals received 62% of technology IPO allocations. Today, secondary markets increasingly serve wealthy accredited investors instead. That is why SpaceX’s expected IPO matters. According to the Wall Street Journal, it could become the largest IPO ever, with such overwhelming demand that trading may not even begin until the afternoon. Reports that up to 30% of shares could go to retail investors are highly unusual, and potentially important as a return to broader public distribution.

Consumers are helping train, adopt, and normalize these systems daily. If ownership remains concentrated entirely inside private capital networks, public resentment will grow alongside AI’s influence. As Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned, “we need to ensure that powerful AI generates broad-based prosperity rather than concentrated wealth.”