Michael Barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily.

On Monday, the AI giant Anthropic filed paperwork to go public, turbocharging a coming wave of blockbuster IPOs that could mint the world's first trillionaire and remake American capitalism.

The first of those IPOs will be Elon Musk's SpaceX, set to begin selling shares as soon as next week.

Today, business reporter Ryan Mack takes us inside the plan for SpaceX's record-shattering debut on the stock market and explains how it's already changing the rules for investing in ways that mean its success or failure will affect all of us.

It's Tuesday, June 2nd.

Ryan, welcome to the show.

My pleasure.

A confession here, it's very rare for The Daily to cover an IPO.

And that's because it's pretty rare that an IPO generates a level of interest and excitement and worry that the one we're going to talk to you about today does.

So my first question to you is, why does this initial public offering of SpaceX matter so much and feel so monumental to so many people?

Well, why is Musk trying to raise this money right now and through the method of an IPO?

You don't have to make a company public to raise a lot of money.

There are all kinds of ways to raise money.

Right, those very modest goals.

And it sounds like you're saying that those kinds of literally otherworldly business goals require the kind of money that you cannot just go to Wells Fargo and get from the bank.

Right.

And so far, Musk will be first.

You describe this as a chance for mom-and-pop investors to become a part of this IPO.

That's not the way I typically think of a company going public.