E241: SpaceX $800b tender and $1.5 trillion IPO, Disney into OpenAI for $1b, Boom Supersonic jet turbines for data centers, + more

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. Here is the pre-IPo stock update for December 12, 2025. SpaceX is marketing a new tender offer at a reported$800 billion valuation, roughly 2x the$400 billion level in its summer 2026 secondary sale. Management has also floated an IPO as soon as mid to late 2026. Rumors point to a$1.5 trillion valuation at IPO and proceeds well north of$30 billion. Saudi Aramco IPO'd in 2019 and raised$29 billion. So a$30 billion SpaceX IPO raise would be the largest on record. The company is allowing employees to sell$2 billion in this current tender. SpaceX forecasts 2025 revenue of$15 billion, climbing to$22 to$24 billion in 2026, with Starlink contributing a majority and potentially reaching a billion subscribers by 2040 per Morgan Stanley estimates, accounting for 74 % of projected$122 billion in sales.

1:03That's the 2040 number forecasted by Morgan Stanley. The$1.5 trillion IPO valuation implies a 62.5 times sales multiple nearing Palantir 70 times, fueled by Starlink's growth, EcoStar spectrum acquisitions, boosting direct-to-mobile capacity 100-fold, and$4 billion in NASA Starship contracts. Investors highlight global orbital data centers, excuse me, Mars settlements as long term drivers. Those skeptics note that competition from Blue Origin and radiation challenges. I think they'll overcome those. Elon Musk tends to do that. SpaceX launch dominance serves NASA and defense with 2025 sales yielding at a hundred times revenue multiple at an$800 billion valuation, surpassing combined caps of six top U.S.

1:51defense firms. Airwall XA payments FinTech raised$330 million at an$8 billion valuation just seven months after completing a$300 million funding round at$6.2 billion, implying a valuation step up of 29%. The company is adding San Francisco is a dual global headquarter and plans to invest over a billion dollars in U.S. operations through 2029 as it pushes further into North America after acquiring California recurring billing startup OpenPay. Management cited a billion dollars in annualized revenue with projections to exceed two billion in annual revenue within 12 months at the current growth rate and said that the U.S.

2:31EMA collectively represent 35 percent of revenue, up from zero percent in 2022. Airwallex said it serves 200 ,000 businesses and holds 80 licenses across Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. The round was led by Edition with participation from Activant, Lingato, Robinhood Ventures, TIA Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. Disney agreed to a three-year licensing partnership with OpenAI and will make a$1 billion equity investment while also becoming a major OpenAI customer and receiving warrants for additional equity. Starting next year, Sora users will be able to generate content using 200 plus characters spanning Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.

3:15And the same IP can be used via chat GPT images with Disney and OpenAI stating the deal excludes talent likenesses or voices. The partnership lands amid heightened IP enforcement, including Disney's reported cease and desist to Google and litigation involving mid-journey and character AI. and follows Sora's September launch that surged to the top of Apple's App Store while triggering copyright scrutiny from the Motion Picture Association. Disney will also host curated Sora selections on Disney+. That's super interesting. AI-generated content through Disney Plus streaming platform. OpenAI reported surging enterprise adoption of its AI tools with ChatGPT message volume up 8x since November 2024 an API consumption of reasoning tokens rising 320x year over year, indicating deeper integration into complex workflows.

4:11Custom GPT deployments jumped 19x, now comprising 20 % of enterprise messages, exemplified by BBVA's, it's a bank, Spanish bank, use of over 4 ,000 tailored assistants. Enterprise users save 40 to 60 minutes daily and with 75 % reporting ability to perform previously inaccessible tasks, including a 36 % rise in coding messages outside of technical teams. OpenAI claims 36 % of U.S. businesses as ChatGPT enterprise customers versus 14.3 % for Anthropic for the Ramp AI Index, though customer subscription remains the majority of the revenue. OpenAI launched GPT 5.2 in three tiers, instant thinking and pro across ChatGPT paid plans and the API positioning as a developer and professional grade model as competitive pressure rises from Google's Gemini 3 and Anthropics Cloud Opus 4.5.

5:10OpenAI claims ChatGBT 5.2 sets new highs in coding, math, science, vision, long context reasoning, and tool use, and said its thinking output delivers 38 % fewer errors than the prior generation, aiming to improve reliability for production workflows like financial modeling and multi-step agent tasks. The release also lands alongside reported internal urgency tied to customer traffic pressure and against the backdrop of OpenAI's infrastructure commitment cited at$1.4 trillion. With ongoing concerns that the high reasoning modes raise inference costs, even as the company argues efficiency per dollar is improving over time.

5:53OpenAI hired Slack CEO Denise Dresser as chief revenue officer, tasking her with enterprise revenue strategy and customer success after 14 plus years at Salesforce and oversight of AI feature rollouts at Slack. The move strengthens OpenAI's commercialization bench alongside Fiji SEMO, which is OpenAI's CEO of applications and the former CEO of Instacart, and signals increased focus on converting usage into durable enterprise AR as the company faces high compute spending and a long path to profitability. Mata acquired Limitless, the AI startup formerly known as Rewind, ending hardware sales of its$99 conversion recording pendant and shifting the business to supporting existing customers for one year while dropping subscription fees and migrating users to an unlimited plan.

6:45Limitless is pendant a wearable AI device that records real world conversations, transcribes them and uses AI to generate summaries and actionable insights. With the goal was to act as a memory assistant to augment human memory and productivity. Limitless said its desktop rewind software and other features will be wound down with its acquisition and users will be offered data export or deletion options. The company had raised$33 million from investors, including A16Z, first round in NEA. And the team will join Meta's Reality Labs wearables organization as Meta concentrates on AI-enabled glasses rather than launching a competing dependent product.

7:27I anticipate that we'll have wearable devices that record everything we see, say, and hear within the next five years. This personal data will be given to AI models to provide full context to provide anyone with a proper personal assistant. So no data privacy, but I do believe that the pros are going to outweigh the cons on sharing this much information about ourselves to tech companies. Legal AI startup Harvey confirmed a new round that values it at$8 billion after raising$160 million only months after a$300 million Series E at$5 billion in June and a$300 million Series D at$3 billion in February, marking a rapid valuation climb of 2.7x from$3 billion to$8 billion within one year.

8:11Harvey said it serves 50 of the Amlaw 100 and later disclosed it surpassed 100 million ARR in August, positioning itself as a category leader as VCs concentrate capital to signal durability to conservative enterprise buyers like major law firms. Backers include A16Z, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, EQT, WonderCo, Conviction, Iliad Gid. And the company traces its origin story to an early proof of concept and outreach that led to backing from OpenAI startup fund. Cohere, the AI large language model company, highlighted a capital-like enterprise strategy as it scaled annualized revenue to$150 million in October from$70 million in February.

8:54While arguing its gross margins are closer to traditional software benchmarks of 75 % than to the less than 50 % gross margin cited for Frontier model peers this year, the company is shifting away from pure usage-based APIs towards a flat monthly fee for customers running models on their own or private cloud servers, improving unit economics by avoiding direct hardware spend while also trading off upside from heavy users and adding deployment friction. Cohear said its models can run on two NVIDIA GPUs. That's pretty good. Appealing to banks and governments that prioritize data control, including a new deal with Thales to support AI software sold to the Canadian military.

9:36Cohear is a Canadian company. Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod stepped down to launch Overtone, an AI and voice-driven dating service that Match Group will back and precede funding while taking a substantial ownership position. The move comes as major dating apps push AI features to counter engagement fatigue, with Tender reporting nine straight quarters of paying subscriber declines and Hinge launching convo starters, while also citing that an AI recommendation feature drove a 15 % increase in matches and contact exchanges in the first quarter after launch. Hinge, founded in 2011 and acquired by Match in 2019, is tracking towards$1 billion in revenue by 2027.

10:20And Hinge president and chief marketing officer Jackie Jantos will become CEO as McLeod stays on as an advisor through March. Boom Supersonic, the supersonic commercial airline company, is commercializing its turbine work by selling a stationary power product with data center developer Caruso, agreeing to buy 29 turbines rated at 42 megawatts each for$1.25 billion, equivalent to 1.21 gigawatt of capacity at$1 ,033 per kilowatt for turbines, generators, controls, and maintenance. Boom raised$300 million to scale the effort and expects first deliveries in 2027 with a factory plan aimed to producing 1 gigawatt in 2028, 2 gigawatts in 2029, and 4 gigawatts in 2030, while routing profits back to its overture supersonic aircraft program.

11:15Boom targets 39 % simple cycle efficiency and is in developing a conversion path towards a combined cycle configurations that can exceed 60 % efficiency, though full projects could land greater than$2 ,000 per kilowatt when pollution controls and balance of plant costs are included using typical cost shares. Revolut, the digital bank, offered former employees a buyback at$966.74 per share. That's a 30 % discount to the recent funding round that valued the company at$75 billion, implying an alumni cash-out valuation of$52.5 billion. The offer price is still at a 12 % premium to the 2024 secondary sale price and comes after September liquidity that let current employees sell up to 20 % of their shares at the$75 billion valuation, while broader secondary program price shares at$1 ,381.06 per share.

12:15Revolut's$75 billion round was led by KOTU, Green Oaks, Dragon Air Fidelity, giving it an equity value comparable to large UK banks, despite the firm still working towards a full UK banking license. During the UK mobilization phase, deposits are capped at£50 ,000. While La Revolut holds banking licenses in other regions, including the EU via Lithuania and Mexico. EQT, the European private equity firm, plans to facilitate deployment of up to 10 ,000 1X neo-humanoid robots across its 300 plus portfolio companies via purchases or leases with shipments running from 2026 through 2030. Although EQT says it's not the direct buyer and each portfolio company will sign its own contract, 1X's NEO is priced at$20 ,000 per unit or a monthly fee and was marketed as a consumer home robot, making the shift towards industrial use cases notable as the sector debates near-term commercialization and bubble risk.

13:18EQT said it negotiated a discount for portfolio companies and OneX has raised$130 million, including$100 million in EQT-led round in 2024, with backing that includes Tiger Global and OpenAI Startup Fund. The company moved its headquarters to Palo Alto in July and OneX is currently out in the market, raising at a$10 million post-money valuation. port the software developer tool company raised 100 million series c led by general at an 800 million valuation bring total funding at 158 million uh since its 35 million series be announced in may as a position itself against spotify's open source backstage that's right spotify the music company is in developer tools as a developer tool business with a proprietary developer portal increasingly oriented around AI agents.

14:10Founded in 2022, Port is selling orchestration layers like the Context Lake agent cataloging performance measurement and human-in-the-loop approvals to enterprise customers such as GitHub, British Telecom, and LG, targeting the operational other 90 % of engineering work beyond code writing. Competition is crowded with Port naming categories that include LandChain, UiPath, Cortex, and other agent management and orchestration platforms. Harness, the AI agent development company, raised a$240 million Series E at a$5.5 billion post-money valuation, including$200 million primary capital led by Goldman Sachs and a planned$40 million tender offer with participation in IVP, Menlo, and Unusual, lifting valuation 49 % from$3.7 billion in April of 2022, bringing total equity raised to$570 million.

15:06The company expects to exceed$250 million ARR in 2025 and is pitching AI automation for the aftercode phase that still consumes 70 % of engineering time using a software delivery known as graph-spanning deployment incidents, policies, and costs. Harness cites scale metrics of 128 million deployments, 81 million builds and 1.2 million API calls projected and 1.9 billion in cloud spend optimized over the past year across 1 ,000 plus enterprise customers and 1 ,200 plus employees in 14 offices, 33 % of staff in India. It plans to hire hundreds more engineers in Begleroo and still targets a future IPO.

15:49broadcom disclosed that anthropic was the previously unnamed customer behind a 10 billion order for google tpu iron road ironwood racks and said anthropic placed an additional 11 billion order in the latest quarter underscoring accelerating demand for custom ai silicon and rack scale systems broadcom shares were cited down 7.39 percent in article context Broadcom also said it secured a fifth custom chip customer with a billion dollar order while keeping the name private. Separately, Anthropic and Google announced a cloud partnership described as worth tens of billions of dollars, providing access to as many as one million Google TPUs and expected to bring well over one gigawatt of AI compute online in 2026.

16:39as Anthropic pursues a multi-cloud, multi-chip strategy spanning Google TPUs, Amazon Tranium, and NVIDIA GPUs. World released a new app version featuring end-to-end encrypted messaging and expanded crypto payments that add Venmo-like send and request flows plus virtual bank account for deposits and paycheck routing with funds convertible into crypto even without biometric verification. The product positions proof of human as a defense against AI-driven identity fraud using Orb Iris scans to create a unique encrypted world ID and adding color-coded chat cues that flag whether a counterparty is verified.

17:21Scale remains the bottleneck. Tools for Humanity has scanned less than 20 million people versus Sam Altman's stated goal of a billion. And the company is attempting to reduce friction via Orb Minis, a handheld device announced in April that enables at-home scans and could evolve into a mobile point-of-sale or licensable sensor technology. Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks, and see you guys next week.