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Mega-IPOs

8 June 2026

There are more than 15 trillion (!) dollar invested in index funds. Starting in a few days and going on until the fall of next year, more than half a trillion dollar of that money will be pulled out from the existing company shares in numerous indexes and used to buy SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic shares from their existing share owners. (Most of it will start happening in about a year, when the S&P500 lets SpaceX join. Unlike NASDAQ, S&P didn't change their rules to fast-track these mega IPOs. But they will join NASDAQ before their first quarterly report as a public company).

With the IPOs of SpaceX (this Friday), OpenAI, and Anthropic, and them joining NASDAQ and FTSE's global index within a few days after their IPOs (and S&P and Dow Jones a year later), everyone who has invested in index funds, be it directly through ETFs or indirectly through their 401k and other retirement plans, will automatically sell about 5% of the shares they are currently holding, and buy shares from one of these three companies. All three IPOs will be, by far!, the largest IPOs in history.

So, if you have $100 invested in a NASDAQ-indexed ETF, you will be selling $5 of the stocks you currently own (while everyone else is doing the same) and buy $5 worth of Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI stocks (while everyone else is doing the same), automatically and predictably.

It will be a tough time for the rest of the stock market this year, as there will be a lot of people's money flowing to OpenAI, SpaceX and Antrhopic without anyone ever intentionally buying it, with the market sending 5% of its liquidity to these three new mega IPOs. It will be immensely beneficial for everyone selling these shares.

Whether it will be beneficial for the general public, i.e. for the people holding these index funds, is something we are going to see in the next few years. I wouldn't wager a prediction on that. Maybe there's an AI bubble that might burst, maybe making more of their numbers public will make some people think they are overvalued, maybe all three companies will realise incredible value and will lift the stock indexes well beyond the 5% of the market they will initially cost. We are going to see. If I could make predicitons about how these things will develop, I'd be much richer.

But it seems that in the next 12-18 months, 100s of billions of dollars are slated to go from retirement plans and other stock investors to Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others. Happy to discuss if I misunderstand.

Simia

The Amazing Digital Circus

6 June 2026

(spoiler free)

The Amazing Digital Circus is an animation show of which, until about a month ago, I haven't even heard about. I learned about it from my daughter. It is the work of an independent creator, and was initially published on YouTube and later also made available on Netflix. The YouTube video of the first episode has more than 400 million views and on Netflix it's been in the top ten for a while.

The premise is that a few humans are captured in a virtual reality, where an AI has the job to entertain them. With time we realize that some of the humans have been there for decades, one has partially lost his mind, and there seems to be no way out. The colorful graphics and seemingly silly character designs hide a much darker story, inspired by "The Matrix", maybe "Lost", and "I have no mouth but I must scream".

The show has nine episodes, each about half an hour long and the final episode double that, so not too long.

I find the animation style somewhat subpar, but the pacing is so much more comfortable and relaxed than many other current shows and movies. The characters are really well done, and feel realistic and multifaceted.

The last episode is currently being shown in cinemas, and it seems do be doing extremely well for an independent show, before it will be available on YouTube in a few days (for free, like the rest of the show). We went to watch it today, and very much enjoyed it.

Given how Lost didn't manage to find a fully satisfying ending, and The Matrix had trouble with storytelling after the first movie, I didn't expect that the Amazing Digital Circus would be able to bring the story to a satisfying end.

I was wrong.

The ending was so much better than I expected it to be. It was fresh and novel (well, there's probably some manga or SF short story with that storyline, but it was novel to me) and more satisfying than I would have deemed possible in such a short episode. Not every question seemed answered, but with this show I expect not to have picked up on every clue and I'll probably find more answers in a few weeks. But the big ones were, and the story came to a close.

Can recommend.

Simia

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