E214: SpaceX soars to $400B valuation; Revolut banks on $65B valuation boost; Groq chips in at $6B valuation; Mistral AI storms to $1B+ raise; Harmonic AI tunes up to $875M valuation; xAI unleashes Grok 4 at PhD-level smarts; X's Yaccarino exits after X m

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. AG Dillon is closing six pre-IPo stock funds in September of 2025. andrel xai grok lambda labs together ai and a space economy company use these single stock funds to build bespoke pre-ipo stock portfolios you select the pre-ipo stock company exposures and weight allocations to each pre-ipo stock to express your unique investment thesis available for purchase at charles schwab fidelity and directly at ag dylan funds 2 500 minimum investment financial advisors only. Email Aaron.Dillon at agdillon.com to invest. Again, that's A-A-R-O-N dot D-I-L-L-O-N at A-G-D-I-L-L-O-N dot com to invest.

0:48All right. Now the pre-IPO stock update for July 11, 2025. SpaceX, the space payload delivery and satellite internet company is in talks to allow employees and early investors to sell shares at a$400 billion valuation that's up 14.3 % from the$350 billion round in December of 2023. The expected secondary sale would total $1 billion, pricing each share at$212 per share. SpaceX may also launch a concurrent primary raise to bring in new capital. This would make SpaceX the most valuable privately held company, held U.S. company, surpassing ByteDance's$400 billion and OpenAI's rumored$311 billion. So it's U.S.

1:33and global. Starlink, its satellite internet unit, contributes over 50 % of annual revenue. The valuation surge follows growth in Starlink and progress on the Starship rocket. Revolut, the online bank, is seeking to raise a billion dollars in a new funding round that would boost its valuation to$65 billion. That's a 44 % increase from its previous$45 billion valuation in 2024. The UK-based fintech has over 60 million users and operates in more than 30 countries. The round led by US-based VC firm Glen Oaks, including both primary share issuance and secondary shares, sales, excuse me. In the past year, Revolut's revenue surged 72%, reaching$1 billion in profit.

2:19The company is focused on expanding in the U.S. market in 2025 and 2026. Revolut has a$43 billion secondary market valuation. That's now 4.4 % versus its August 2024 round. So this new primary round that would happen would see a dramatic pop even in the secondary market. Grok, the AI semiconductor company, is in talks to raise$300 to$500 million at a$6 billion post-money valuation, more than double its$2.8 billion valuation from 2023. The San Jose-based firm, backed by over a billion dollars from investors like BlackRock, Cisco, Samsung, and Tiger Global, expects revenue to jump 456 % this year to$500 million, up from$90 million in 2023, or 2024, excuse me.

3:07The GROC recently secured a$1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia and announced a new data center in Finland. GROC has 70 ,000 chips online and reports 2 million users. The company positions its chips optimized for inference, not training. So inference is running AI models versus training AI models as cheaper, faster, and more efficient than NVIDIA's. The AI chip market has seen over$7 billion in recent funding across 24 startups. BRAC has a$5 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 77 % versus its August 2024 round. Mistral AI, the AI large language model company focused on the EU market is in talks to raise up to a billion in equity, plus several hundred million in euros in debt from investors, including Abu Dhabi's MGX and French leader BPI France, French lender, excuse me, BPI France.

4:01Founded in 2023, Mistral has already raised over 1.17 billion and reached $6.78 billion valuation in its last round. The company plans to spend several billion euros on computing infrastructure, including a new data center near Paris and the upcoming Mistral Compute Cloud platform powered by 18 ,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell chips. Mistral, NVIDIA, and MGX are collaborating to build Europe's largest AI data center, part of a broader$50 billion AI commitment from UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Existing Mistral backers include Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed. harmonic ai math focused ai company ai model company was founded in 2023 by robin hood ceo vlad tenov and tudor akman i believe i said that right the company has raised 100 million in series b round led by kleiner perkins bringing in a total of 175 million and valuing the company at 875 million the palo alto based startup focused on mathematical super intelligence aiming to solve complex math problems beyond the human capability using its flagship model, Aristotle, which will launch later this year.

5:17Unlike typical large language models, Harmonic prioritizes formal verification to eliminate hallucinations and ensure every reasoning step is mathematically sound. Backers include Sequoia Capital Index Ventures and Paradigm. Tenev serves as executive chairman. XAI, the AI large language model business, has launched Grok4 and Grok4 Heavy, introducing its most advanced reasoning AI models to date alongside a$300 per month Super Grok Heavy subscription, the most expensive among AI providers. Grok4 achieved 25.4 % on the rigorous Humanities Last Exam without tools, outperforming Google Gemini's 2.5 Pro with 21.6 OpenAI is 03 with 21%.

6:05With tools, Grok4 Heavy scored 44.4%, far surpassing Gemini Pro's 26.9%. On the ARK AGI 2 test, Grok scored a 16.2%, nearly doubling the previous record held by Claude Opus 4, that's Anthropix model. The model is trained with 10x more compute than Grok3, that's 200 ,000 GPUs. Grapp now powers enterprise tools, integrates deeply with X, and is accessible via API. The company also teased future models, a coding model in August, a multimodal agent in September, and a video generator in October. Elon Musk, XAI's CEO, claimed Grapp 4 performs at a PhD level in all academic disciplines, aiming to soon invent new technologies and discover new physics.

6:58XAI has a$120 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 6.4 % versus its March 2024 round. I should say Elon Musk is making a bet that more GPUs training a model delivers better results. And this certainly proved to be true. They already have 300 ,000 GPUs in their data center in Memphis, Tennessee, and he has plans to go to a million GPUs. My estimates put that at about another$40 billion in capital GPU for those GPUs that he needs to raise. Keep your eye out for that. Linda, Yaccarino has announced her departure as CEO of X, now a division of XAI. After a two-year tender marked by major transformation and growth, appointed in May of 2023 following Elon Musk's$44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Yaccarino played a pivotal role in reshaping the platform into the Everything app.

7:53Under her leadership, X merged with XAI in an all-stock deal, valuing XAI at$80 billion and X at$33 billion, drawing on her background, leading global advertising at NBCUniversal. Yaccarino worked to stabilize business operations, re-engage advertisers, and reinforce X's mission around free speech and innovation. A new CEO for X has yet to be named. Perplexity AI, the AI search company has launched Comet, an AI-powered web browser available to Perplexity Max users, subscribers, excuse me, at a$200 per month fee, marking a major push to compete with Google and Microsoft and consumer Internet. The browser includes Comet Assistant.

8:39It's a multifunctional AI agent that can summarize emails, manage tabs, and interact with apps like Slack. The launch follows Perplexity's rapid growth with 780 million queries in May of 2025 and 20 % plus month over month usage growth. Comet debuts amid Perplexity's talks to raise$500 million at a$14 billion valuation. And after rejecting a potential acquisition by Meta, the browser integrates Perplexity AI search engine. Comet Assistant scored well on tasks like summarizing emails and navigating calendars. Despite competition from Google's Chrome, Apple Safari, and newcomers like Dia, Comet positions Perplexity as a rising challenger in the AI browser space.

9:26Perplexity has a$12.7 billion secondary market valuation. That's down 9.6 % versus this recently announced round. So interesting to see what's going to happen with this round here. OpenAI, the AI large language model company, plans to launch its own AI-powered web browser in the coming weeks, aiming to challenge Google Chrome and, of course, perplexity, which we just discussed, which holds over a Google Chrome, homes over 66 % of global browser market and serves more than 3 billion users. Built atop Google's open source cronium code base, the browser is expected to integrate OpenAI's operator agent and retain user interactions within a chat GPT style interface.

10:09If adopted, chat GPT's 400 million weekly active users, the browser could significantly disrupt Google's ad ecosystem, which generates nearly 75 % of Alphabet's revenue. OpenAI is expanding rapidly with 3 million paying business users. AI native interfaces are becoming a new battleground with AI focused companies. OpenAI previously hired two former Google VPs from the Chrome team. OpenAI is a $311 billion secondary market valuation. That's up 3.8 % versus its February 2025 convertible note. Xi 'an, the online fast fashion company, has confidentially filed for an IPO in Hong Kong, marking its third attempt to go public after facing regulatory roadblocks in the US and UK.

10:58founded in China and now headquartered in Singapore. Xi 'an has initially targeted a U.S. listing, but faced opposition from U.S. lawmakers citing supply chain and labor concerns. The SEC was urged to block the IPO and Chinese authorities must also approve any listing. After shipping focused to London, Xi 'an secured approval from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, but China's securities regulators blocked the move due to concerns over supply chain disclosures. The company's continued IPO push highlights its global ambitions amid mounting geopolitical and regulatory scrutiny. IPO valuation is rumored to be about$50 billion.

11:35However, the U.S.'s new tariffs on de minimis shipped goods from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that just passed could dramatically impact Sheehan's revenue, driving further downward pressure on the company's IPO. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, video game, and Unreal Engine, it's the virtual reality software, has settled its antitrust lawsuit against Samsung, ending a legal battle over claims that Samsung conspired with Google to suppress rival app stores on Android devices. Though the terms were undisclosed, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney stated that the Samsung would address the company's concerns.

12:17The lawsuit filed in 2023 was part of Epic's broader campaign against app store monopolies. Epic previously won a jury trial against Google, which is currently under appeal. and partially one versus Apple, which now must allow third-party app payment systems. Epic's legal actions target over 99 % of the global smartphone OS market, split between Android and iOS, as it fights for more open app distribution and reduced platform fees. Epic Game has a$16.1 billion secondary market valuation that's down 28.6 % versus its February 2024 round. Hugging Face, the AI model management company, has launched its first developer-focused robotics product, the open-source Ricci Mini desktop robots, now available for order.

13:12Two versions are offered, the Ricci Mini Lite at$299, which requires a wired connection, and the Ricci Mini Wireless at$449. The robots, about the size of a stuffed animal, feature two screens for eyes, two antennas, and come in built-in build-it-yourself kits. They are fully programmable in Python and integrated with Hugging Face Hub, which hosts over 1.7 million AI models and 400 ,000 plus training databases. Shipping begins next month for the Lite version with the wireless model to follow later this year. The launch follows the May debut of prototypes and the larger Hope JR humanoid robot. Hugging Face aims to foster a community-driven robotics ecosystem by encouraging users to build and share custom features, aligning with the company's open source philosophy and mission to democratize AI hardware.

14:10Hugging Face has a$5.3 billion secondary market valuation that's up 18.2 % versus its August 2023 round. Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks and see you guys next week.