The Kobeissi Letter has declared it: a new club has formed. Call it the AI Trillion-Dollar Club — three private companies with combined implied valuations of $3.7 trillion, all jostling for the chance to go public in what analysts are calling the biggest IPO wave in history.
But here’s the thing: $3.7 trillion is a lot of paper. How much of it is real?
The Members (as of April 28, 2026)
🏆 Public Companies That Actually Trade
These are the real trillion-dollar club. No secondary market gamesmanship, no onchain pre-IPO instruments — these are actual public market caps, traded every day:
| Company | Market Cap | AI Connection |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | $5.2T | The AI picks-and-shovels king. Up $1T in the last week alone. |
| Alphabet | ~$4.1T | Gemini, DeepMind, $40B bet on Anthropic, TPU chips. |
| Apple | ~$4T | Quietly playing catch-up in AI. Massive installed base as moat. |
| Microsoft | ~$3.15T | OpenAI’s biggest backer — though exclusivity just ended. |
| Amazon | ~$2.8T | AWS AI services, Anthropic investor, Alexa reboot. |
That’s $19.25 trillion in combined market cap from five companies, all deeply invested in AI.
📈 The Private Club (Implied Valuations)
Then there’s the trio Kobeissi highlighted — three private companies whose implied valuations have crossed $1 trillion:
| Company | Implied Value | Official Last Round | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | ~$880B | $852B (March 2026) | Nearly there |
| Anthropic | ~$1T (secondary) | $380B (Feb 2026) | Huge gap |
| SpaceX | ~$800B-$1T+ | $800B (late 2025) | Starlink catalyst |
Anthropic is the headline: its secondary market valuation hit $1 trillion on the back of tokenized PreStock shares trading on Jupiter (Solana’s DEX), up from $851 billion just two weeks prior. The company’s official valuation after its $30 billion Series G in February was $380 billion — meaning the secondary market is pricing in a 2.6x premium over the last primary round.
That’s either visionary or speculative. Possibly both.
How We Got Here
The numbers are absurd by any historical measure:
- Anthropic: $9B ARR at end of 2025 → over $30B by March 2026. That’s 233% QoQ revenue growth. Investors are chasing it like it’s 1999 — VC bids at $800B+ were rebuffed before secondary markets pushed it past $1T.
- OpenAI: $122B funding round in March 2026, valuation $852 billion. Targeting an IPO that bankers say could aim for $400-500B — though the secondary market clearly thinks it’s worth more.
- SpaceX: Private valuation around $800B with Starlink revenues soaring. IPO target of $1.5-2T floated, possibly spinning off Starlink first.
All three are eyeing 2026 IPOs. If even two of them list this year, we’re looking at the largest IPO wave in history — by a long shot.
The Caveat Nobody Wants to Talk About
Secondary market valuations are not public market caps. They’re based on thin trading volumes among accredited investors who are betting on future IPOs. An analyst told Bloomberg that Anthropic’s secondary valuation faces a potential “75% reset” risk post-IPO when supply floods the market.
Put differently: the same instrument that says Anthropic is worth $1 trillion today might be worth $250 billion when real public investors get a crack at it.
This doesn’t mean the valuations are wrong. It means they haven’t been tested. The IPO window will be the real exam.
What This Means for New Zealand
It’s easy to watch from down under and feel like this is all happening on another planet. But a few things land locally:
- Nvidia’s $5.2T means every NZ company building AI infrastructure is paying a premium for chips. That flows through to pricing.
- The IPO wave creates a massive liquidity event — billions that could flow into global markets, including NZX-listed tech.
- AI labour costs keep rising at the top while compute costs keep falling. That’s a dynamic that favours smaller, capital-efficient markets like NZ.
- Cloud concentration risk: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google fund their AI ambitions through cloud revenue. NZ businesses relying on AWS/Azure/GCP are indirectly funding this arms race.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
The AI Trillion-Dollar Club is real — but it’s not what the hype merchants want you to believe.
The real trillion-dollar club is the public one: Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon. These are companies with actual earnings, actual products, and actual market caps that get tested every trading day.
The implied trillion-dollar club — OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX — is a bet on the future. A big one. If their IPOs deliver, we’ll see the largest wealth creation event in tech history. If they don’t, the reset will be brutal.
Either way, it’s the most interesting financial story of 2026. And we’ve got front-row seats.
Related: Anthropic Raises $30 Billion — Valuation Hits $380 Billion and Google Commits up to $40 Billion to Anthropic — the primary market story behind the secondary hype.
