As AI companies race to go public, who else is along for the ride?

SpaceX went public this week in the largest initial public offering ever. The move made chief executive Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. The company has emphasized the potential of its costly AI business. OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts. On the latest episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane and Anthony Ha discussed the developments. Korosec said the public markets are shifting capital toward AI labs and innovative deep tech such as SpaceX and away from consumer and social networks. Sean O'Kane said SpaceX is sucking up a huge chunk of money available on public markets. He added that the company is stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled Korosec noted that other startups are trying to ride the SpaceX IPO wave. Examples include companies raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX helped popularize the concept and Quantum Space pursuing a SPAC. The discussion touched on how AI is remaking the economy through efforts to build it. Ford and General Motors are pivoting unused battery creation capacity to be energy providers for data centers. Ford's stock rose after the company announced an energy storage business. Korosec said automaker chief executives should not try to model their businesses after those of Elon Musk.