A company valued at over $4 trillion doesn’t usually see its stock price rise from IPOs of private companies it owns stakes in. That could change with Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL), which owns stakes in two of the largest private companies ever.
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Alphabet’s Investments in Anthropic, SpaceX
The year 2026 could go down as one of the biggest ever for IPOs with both Anthropic and SpaceX among the companies that have filed to go public.
SpaceX could seek a valuation of $1.75 trillion or more with its IPO. Anthropic was recently valued at $965 billion in a private funding round and could be valued above $1 trillion in the public markets.
Those companies going public could allow long-time shareholder Alphabet the ability to cash out of its stakes, but perhaps more importantly for shareholders, the ability for the company to adjust its valuation for its stakes based on the public valuations.
Both SpaceX and Anthropic could see huge demand for their public offerings.
Alphabet invested $900 million in SpaceX back in 2015, with the company valuated at around $12 billion at the time. Alphabet owns around 7% of SpaceX, according to reports and participated in a later round after its initial stake.
Alphabet invested $3 billion in Anthropic between 2023 and 2025. Alphabet’s stake in the company is a reported 14%.
Assuming SpaceX is worth $1.75 trillion and Anthropic is worth $965 billion, here are Alphabet’s estimated stake values:
- SpaceX: $122.5 billion
- Anthropic: $135.1 billion
Together, the two stakes are worth $257.6 billion today and could increase over time as the companies go public.
What’s Next for Alphabet
The investments in SpaceX and Anthropic, along with other investments and ownership stakes, such as around 80% ownership of Waymo are a small position for Alphabet and could be one that many investors and analysts are ignoring.
Alphabet is one of the largest companies in the world and has multiple segments that it competes in, including search, advertising, smartphones, streaming and cloud.
Analysts and investors do their best to value each of those parts, but Alphabet is likely trading at a discount to its sum-of-the-parts valuation.
Alphabet has not said whether it will sell its stakes in SpaceX or Anthropic in the future, but it is likely that analysts will add more to their price targets to account for these stakes.
More analysts could also look at Alphabet to see what the sum-of-the-parts could look like if the company was forced to split up or voluntarily chose to start splitting off or selling some units to unlock shareholder value.
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