Gavin Baker's Decade-Long SpaceX Bet Is About To Print. Here's The Read-Through For Goldman, Morgan Stanley, And The Picks-And-Shovels Names.
Tuesday's WSJ B1 profile of star stock picker Gavin Baker is the cleanest window we have into how the SpaceX IPO — now 15 days out, targeting a $1.5 trillion market cap — ripples through the public-market book.
Baker first bet on SpaceX in 2015 when he was at Fidelity Investments — SpaceX was worth roughly $10 billion at the time and had not yet successfully landed a rocket. He left Fidelity in 2019 to launch his own hedge fund, Atreides Management, and bought SpaceX again at a $30 billion valuation that year. Both stakes are about to print billion-dollar gains.
The Public-Market Trade Around SpaceX
SpaceX itself isn't buyable yet — only insiders, pre-IPO investors, and (after the float) public shareholders are positioned. The trade is in the names that benefit from the IPO machinery and the post-IPO infrastructure spend.
Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) are co-running the SpaceX book. The fee on a $1.5 trillion IPO at standard underwriting economics runs into the billions. GS closed last Thursday at $999.50; that strength reflects the IPO pipeline refilling.
Other IPO names in the queue. The article confirms: OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to file confidentially within weeks. Stripe is targeting a 2026 listing. Databricks is queued. The cumulative IPO advisory backlog at GS and MS is the largest it's been since 2021.
The Picks-And-Shovels Read
SpaceX's IPO doesn't just generate fees; it generates a balance-sheet repair. Once public, SpaceX can issue equity to fund Starlink expansion, Starship development, and the Tesla-AI compute partnership. That capital all gets spent on:
- AI compute — Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Starship navigation, Optimus production lines, and Starlink load-balancing all run on AI inference at scale.
- Data center infrastructure — Vertiv (VRT), Eaton (ETN), Arista Networks (ANET), Bloom Energy (BE). The compute has to be powered and networked.
- Materials / specialty manufacturing — Albemarle (ALB) for lithium, MP Materials (MP) for rare earths. Battery supply chains for the broader Musk ecosystem.
The Risk Footnote
The SpaceX IPO has the largest expected first-day float since Saudi Aramco. There is real risk of allocation imbalance — Nasdaq is reportedly doing mock opening tests to ensure platform stability. A messy first-day print would not change the fundamental story but could compress GS / MS multiples for one or two quarters.
Bigger risk: any Iran-related geopolitical disruption in the 15 days before launch could push the float into July or beyond. The deal-team timing is reportedly conditional on a stable risk-off window.
For Clients Asking About SpaceX Directly
We cannot buy SpaceX shares for client accounts pre-IPO. After the float, we'll evaluate position sizing based on actual disclosed financials — SpaceX posted a $4.9B net loss in 2025 per the prospectus, and losses are accelerating as Starship and Starlink build out. The trade we're taking now is in the underwriters and infrastructure suppliers.