“One last thing,” he pauses, “Can I get access to SpaceX before it goes public?”

This is the third time this week I’ve gotten the question.

SpaceX- maker of Starlink (and new owner of X/AI) is set to be the largest IPO of all time. We’ve written about how IPO’s aren’t always great for the public, but that hasn’t slowed down the media hype train this time around.

SpaceX isn’t alone- this year, there are a handful of soon-to-be-public companies with mega-market cap valuations (estimates in parentheses):

· SpaceX ($1.5 Trillion)

· Anthropic (up to $1 Trillion)

· Open AI (up to $1 Trillion)

· Stripe ($150 Billion)

· Databricks ($100 Billion)

· Anduril ($60 Billion)

Going public means gigantic windfalls of cash for founders and early private investors.

Tech IPO’s weren’t always this large: compare those numbers to Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla, which all came public at valuations below $2 Billion. Those would be considered small caps today, meaning they’ve created generational wealth for investors during their ascent to trillion-dollar land.

Private equity has certainly changed the investing game over the past few decades. With so much private investing out there, it’s increasingly unlikely that companies can come public at a small valuation and grow like they once did. Which brings us to here:

Getting direct shares of private, growing companies isn’t easy; usually, the early funding rounds are led by multi-billion-dollar venture capital firms that write investment checks for hundreds of millions.

With that said, most people might not realize they might already have a stake in these companies through what they already own.

Google is famous for categorizing its outside investments in a category called “Other Bets” back in 2015. Here are a few of their holdings:

Portfolio Company	Alphabet's Estimated Stake	2026 Company Valuation	Estimated Value of Alphabet's Stake
SpaceX	~6%	$1.75T – $2T	~$105 Billion
Anthropic	~14%	$350B – $380B	~$53 Billion
Stripe	Undisclosed	$159 Billion	Undisclosed
Waymo*	Majority Owner	$126 Billion	Majority

Amazon has a similar venture portfolio

Portfolio Company	Amazon's Estimated Stake	2026 Company Valuation	Estimated Value of Amazon's Stake
Anthropic	Mid-teens (~15%)	$350B – $380B	~$70+ Billion
Rivian (RIVN)	11.8%	~$21 Billion (Public)	~$2.5 Billion
Deliveroo (ROO)	~11.5%	~$3 Billion (Public)	~$345 Million
Agility Robotics	Undisclosed	$1 Billion+ (Est)	Undisclosed

Salesforce Ventures has a couple of home runs with Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks. NVIDIA has a stake and a chip purchase agreement with OpenAI. Softbank owns 13% of OpenAI and 90% of ARM Holdings ($200B Semiconductors).

Last summer, the narrative on Wall Street was that several of these Big Tech companies were due for disruption. Google’s search ads business was under attack. Surprise! They’ve got Gemini and are Major owners in Claude (Anthropic). This puts them in a unique business situation; Heads I win; tails we flip again.

If you’re looking for access to these companies before they IPO, you have options. There are private funds, ETF’s, and mutual funds that have an early stake in some of these companies. But the sneaky play (and perhaps less risky) might be hiding in plain sight- owning beneficial shares through a company that’s already public.

IPO’s come and go, and there will always be a new one. Some will boom, others will bust. More importantly, anyone can learn a lesson from these big businesses. No matter how well your cash flow may be going, you can create an economic moat through strategic investing.

And if the main thing does fail, or you retire, that investment portfolio might be the thing that carries you forward.

You might already own some of 2026’s biggest private companies