Altman’s prominent role as the face of OpenAI products despite his 0% ownership stake highlights a shift where control over narrative and access to capital is more valuable than direct ownership. This “modern mercantilism” values influence and power over traditional cap table percentages.

When an experienced founder starts a new venture based on their own vision, the equity split doesn't need to be 50/50. By framing it as 'my deal,' the primary founder can retain a supermajority (e.g., 80%) while giving a technical co-founder a smaller but still meaningful stake.

For highly-capitalized companies like SpaceX and OpenAI, bankers are designing new IPO structures. Instead of standard 90-180 day lockup periods, they're planning staggered share releases over a longer timeframe to manage immense selling pressure from a large base of private shareholders and prevent post-IPO stock volatility.

A contrarian prediction suggests SpaceX will forgo a traditional IPO and instead execute a reverse merger into Tesla. This strategic move would allow Elon Musk to consolidate control over his two most significant companies under a single cap table and corporate structure.

As a CEO with no personal shares, Sam Altman is unconcerned with dilution at OpenAI. This unique position frees him to authorize massive, dilutive stock-based compensation packages and raise vast amounts of capital, prioritizing winning the AI race above all else, without the typical founder's financial constraints.

SpaceX is reportedly targeting a $1.5 trillion IPO to raise $30 billion. This capital isn't just for rockets but to fund a new AI infrastructure business: data centers in space. This represents a significant strategic shift, leveraging its launch dominance to compete in the AI compute market by acquiring massive quantities of GPUs.

For trillion-dollar private companies like SpaceX going public, the traditional 90-180 day lockup period is inadequate. The massive volume of insider shares hitting the market at once could crash the stock. Investment bankers are now designing staggered lockup releases to manage this unprecedented liquidity event.

The enormous capital required for AI development is exhausting private markets. This forces giants like the combined SpaceX/xAI entity, OpenAI, and Anthropic towards IPOs, marking a shift back to public markets for funding as the sole source for sufficient capital.

A potential merger between xAI and the IPO-ready SpaceX would allow Elon Musk to take an AI company public far ahead of rivals OpenAI and Anthropic. This move serves as an "end run" around the traditional process, aiming to capture the first-mover advantage and the narrative as the primary public AI investment.