Good Morning! Jeff Bezos' industrial AI startup Prometheus raised $12 billion in a Series B at a $41 billion valuation. KKR launched a $10 billion AI infrastructure company alongside Nvidia and Vistra. And gold slumped to a six-month low as speculative investors exit.

Blackstone could contribute as much as $300 million to back a new quant hedge fund from a Two Sigma veteran. Carlyle is seeking $15 billion for its new flagship PE fund. And rent is so high, some New York women are living with nuns.

Plus: Apollo says huge private equity software bets are most at risk as investors face a returns squeeze, and how to start building confidence.

This new AI platform reduces the cost for commercial due diligence by 10x. Get access here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

SpaceX IPO Is Here

SpaceX begins trading on Nasdaq today under the ticker SPCX, and investors are about to find out how much appetite the market really has for Elon Musk’s biggest story yet.

The company priced 555.6 million shares at $135 each, raising about $75 billion at a roughly $1.8 trillion valuation. That makes it the largest IPO in history, easily surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion record from 2019. To put the scale in perspective, SpaceX’s projected market cap nearly equals the combined value of the 29 largest U.S. IPOs since 2000, adjusted for inflation.

Demand has been insane. Investor orders reportedly topped $250 billion, making the deal roughly 4x oversubscribed. Multiple institutions placed orders of $10 billion or more, while retail demand alone topped $100 billion. Retail investors are expected to get at least 20% of the offering, and some reports put the retail allocation closer to 30%, versus the typical 5% to 10%.

Only about 7% of SpaceX shares are expected to be freely tradable initially, which means a massive amount of demand may be chasing a very limited float. SpaceX is also expected to enter the Nasdaq 100 shortly after listing, potentially triggering an estimated $22 billion to $27 billion of index fund buying. 

The bull case is obvious. SpaceX conducts more rocket launches annually than the rest of the world combined, is a critical launch provider for NASA and the Pentagon, and has more than 9 million Starlink subscribers. The company is also increasingly being pitched as an AI infrastructure play, not just a rocket company. Investors are buying launch dominance, satellite internet, government contracts, xAI exposure, and the possibility that SpaceX becomes the backbone for future AI compute infrastructure.

The bear case: valuation is insane, and the financials are not exactly Apple. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025 but lost about $4.9 billion. That means public investors are paying mega-cap prices for a company still burning heavily to fund rockets, satellites, AI infrastructure, and Musk’s broader sci-fi roadmap. The long-term story may be massive, but a lot of it still depends on technology and economics that have not been proven at scale.

The IPO will also mint a new Silicon Valley aristocracy. More than 4,400 SpaceX employees are expected to become millionaires, with roughly 400 holding stock worth $100 million or more. COO Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen each hold stakes worth more than $1 billion.

Elon's friend and director Antonio Gracias, who owns 6.7% of SpaceX, is set for a $68B payday. Musk himself owns roughly 43%, and the IPO will likely push his net worth past $1 trillion, making him the world's first trillionaire.

Takeaway: SpaceX is not just the biggest IPO ever. It is the market's first real stress test for trillion-dollar private companies going public. If SpaceX trades well, OpenAI, Anthropic, and every late-stage AI giant will be watching with their bankers on speed dial. If it stumbles, the next wave of mega-IPOs gets a lot more complicated. Either way, it's the first stock in history where "to the moon" is the actual business plan.

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DiligenceSquared delivers the same investment-grade diligence 10x cheaper and faster. AI voice agents run expert interviews at scale, in any language, then compile everything into an interactive report where you can audit each claim and trace it to source in one click. There’s a human layer too, AI handles the junior-analyst work, while senior ex-MBB consultants oversee every project before it ships.

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HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj's AI startup Prometheus raises $12 billion Series B at $41 billion valuation (CNBC)

• KKR debuts $10B AI infrastructure firm, with Nvidia's help (WSJ)

• Gold slumps to 6-month low even as inflation fears rise (CNBC)

• Blackstone to back Two Sigma veteran's quant hedge fund startup (BB)

• Carlyle seeks roughly $15 billion for new flagship PE fund (BB)

• Rent is so high, New Yorkers are living with nuns (WSJ)

• Huge private equity software bets most at risk as investors face returns squeeze, Apollo says (CNBC)

• DCC says it intends to accept revised $7.6 billion KKR consortium offer (WSJ)

• SpaceX IPO draws more than $70 billion in retail orders (BB)

• Bezos bats down AI job-loss fears while launching new venture (WSJ)

• Accounting firm Crowe to sell stake to KKR in nearly $3 billion deal (WSJ)

• KKR says AI productivity boom to keep going — but warns of 'extreme' trend not seen since the 19th century (CNBC)

• Private equity parties as LPs wait for cash (FT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Stocks rallied on optimism surrounding a potential U.S.-Iran peace agreement, with the S&P 500 +1.9% and Nasdaq +2.5%.

• Oil prices fell to around $87 per barrel as hopes for de-escalation increased, helping ease inflation concerns.

• Industrials and materials led gains, while energy, real estate, and consumer staples lagged.

• Treasury yields moved lower, with the 10-year yield at 4.45% and the 2-year yield at 4.05%.

Economic Data Highlights

• Producer price inflation (PPI) rose 6.5% year-over-year in May, slightly above expectations and the highest reading since 2022.

• Core PPI increased 4.9% year-over-year, indicating underlying inflation pressures remain elevated despite improving energy trends.

• The combination of elevated inflation and a resilient labor market is likely to keep the Fed on hold in the near term.

• Policymakers may remove their easing bias at next week's meeting, though the bar for additional rate hikes remains high.

IPO Activity Heats Up

• SpaceX is expected to begin secondary-market trading today, while OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly preparing for public listings later this year.

• Historically, large IPOs have underperformed the S&P 500 by roughly 15% during their first year and experienced significantly higher volatility.

• Among the 30 largest IPOs over the past 20 years, average first-year drawdowns approached 50%, highlighting the risks associated with newly public companies.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Virgin Galactic ($SPCE) +22% after SpaceX IPO fever lifted the entire space sector as investors bought publicly traded space proxies.

• (+) Sandisk ($SNDK) +15% because Morgan Stanley flagged SNDK and Micron as the biggest winners from a prolonged AI memory upcycle and raised estimates and price targets.

  (–) Oracle ($ORCL) -9% after the company announced it would raise ~$40B via debt and equity to fund its AI data center buildout.

Prediction Markets

• Number of launches is the key revenue driver for SpaceX.

• Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

• Prometheus, the industrial AI startup launched by Jeff Bezos, raised $12 billion

• Neura Robotics, a German developer of humanoid robotics, raised $1.4 billion

• Cyera, a data security company, raised $600 million

• Digital Asset, developer of the Canton Network, raised $355 million

• TensorWave, an AMD AI cloud, raised $350 million

• Satispay, an Italian fintech, plans to raise up to around $130 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Tenacious

Description:
An inspiring guide from Scott Scovill on the power of persistence, resilience, and long-term commitment in achieving ambitious goals. Drawing from his experiences building large-scale events and navigating entrepreneurial challenges, the book explores what it takes to keep moving forward when progress is slow, obstacles arise, and doubt creeps in. It emphasizes that extraordinary outcomes are often the result of sustained effort rather than extraordinary talent.

Book Length: 256 pages
Release Date: April 15, 2025

Ideal For:
Entrepreneurs, creators, and ambitious individuals pursuing challenging goals who need motivation and practical lessons on perseverance and long-term execution.

The difference between a dream and a reality is often the willingness to keep going long after the excitement has faded.

DAILY VISUAL

Tech Dominance Is Pushing Single-Stock Risk to Records

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How the Rich Don’t Pay Capital Gains Tax

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Explore Stelrix’s Instagram for luxury and finance news and sign-up for their waitlist today.

DAILY ACUMEN

On Paper

A thought that feels brilliant in your head has a way of collapsing the moment you try to write it down. This is not a flaw in the writing. It is the writing doing its job. Vague ideas survive comfortably in the mind because the mind fills every gap with a feeling of understanding. Paper offers no such charity.

This is why the discipline of writing things out, an investment thesis, a decision, an argument, is really a discipline of thinking. The gaps, the leaps, the assumptions you did not know you were making all become visible the moment they have to hold together in sentences.

If you cannot write it clearly, you do not understand it yet. Most people avoid the page precisely because of what it reveals.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• How to start building confidence

• Optimization has no soul

• The art of being unreachable

• How to turn what could have been an argument into a productive conversation

• Is the Fitbit Air a Whoop killer?

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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