> point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market

I think this is what's going on right now. But there are a variety of reasons that can drive IPO timing. Need for cash and owners needing liquidity being chief among them.

I'd also say that post-Covid, retail has become a commanding section of the American equity markets in a way I don't think they've been in my lifetime. As a result, every IPO from now on will have to target retail.

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siren2026 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Both OpenAI and Anthropic were able to raise astronomical amount of cash on the private markets just weeks ago. I don't think that's what's driving them.

I really think what is driving this is the need for insiders, employees, early investors to be able to sell their stock at scale before the music stops.

And You can only do that through a full IPO. All those companies had private secondary transaction but none of them were big enough to transfer the Trillions of $ required for the insiders to unload their bags.

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JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> what is driving this is the need for insiders, employees, early investors to be able to sell their stock at scale before the music stops

How would you differentiate insiders needing to sell versus insiders needing to dump before a crash?

I remember when Uber and Airbnb and WeWork went public in quick succession. There were similar claims. WeWork never made it public. And Uber and Airbnb's IPO investors made of fantastically.

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siren2026 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> How would you differentiate insiders needing to sell versus insiders needing to dump before a crash?

To answer this, just ask yourself how many of the insiders would have bought the stock at current IPO's price? Most insiders would probably never touch those stocks at this price. I know a couple people at OpenAI and Anthropic that are very clearly selling everything they can as soon as they can.

This is all a carefully orchestrated PR game that is relying on retail to be the ultimate fool. I guess to some level every IPO is like that (A PR game to hype the company).

But never before had we 3 mega IPOs happening at almost the exact same time with so much money to unload on retails with dubious ways to force funds to gobble them.

Most IPOs end up negative after the first few quarters (at least compared to the SP500). When we are talking about a 20B$ company it matters less than 5T$ being suddenly fully unloaded on the public.

> And Uber and Airbnb's IPO investors made of fantastically.

Did they? https://www.alphaspread.com/comparison/nasdaq/abnb/vs/indx/g...

The only way they might have is by getting the shares at the actual IPO price, and even then it's around the same as the SP500 return since then.

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JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> couple people at OpenAI and Anthropic that are very clearly selling everything they can as soon as they can

If you are serious about this for Anthropic please drop me a line. (Not OpenAI.)

> never before had we 3 mega IPOs happening at almost the exact same time

Uber (May 2019), Airbnb (December 2020) and WeWork (scheduled 2019, SPAC 2021) were pretty closely bunched. And they were big for their time. Keep in mind that the money supply has expanded since then.

> Most IPOs end up negative after the first few quarters

Source?

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siren2026 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Source?

There is an actual ETF tracking IPOs: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IPO/

	▲	JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> There is an actual ETF tracking IPOs Renaissance's IPO index seeks to "capture the essence of IPO activity and performance of newly public companies" [1]. It does not replicate an actual IPO investor's returns. For example, it adds new issues approximately quarterly and never earlier than 5 days from IPO. This is important since it misses the pop. Mean (median) first-day returns on IPOs are 20% (7%) [2]. The average 3-year buy-and-hold return for all IPO investors 1980 to 2025 was 19.1%. Less than broad-market indices (though that margin shrinks for $1bn+ sales IPOs). But certainly not negative. (Uber and Airbnb reflect this trend. Up since IPO. But, as you observe, below the S&P 500's returns even before taking into account total returns.) [1] https://www.lseg.com/content/dam/ftse-russell/en_us/document... [2] https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/IPO-Statistics.... 1980 to 2025; 30% (14%) for 2025

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s1artibartfast 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it bad for insiders to want out? Is it bad for owners to sell when they think it is overpriced?

I think this is extremely common, if not necessary, part of a functioning market and price discovery. It happens with not just IPOs but also secondary offerings.

Some of this seems like dumb retail wanting to toughtlessly buy without consideration of risk.