E246: SpaceX acquires xAI, now $1.473T in secondary market; Waymo at $116B, +14% vs last round; ElevenLabs at $11B, $330M ARR; + more

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. Here is the pre-IPO stock update for February 6, 2026. SpaceX, the space payload and satellite internet company, has acquired XAI in an all-stock transaction that values the combined company at$1.25 trillion. dollars. SpaceX entered the merger at a trillion and XAI entered at 250 billion and it's structured as a share exchange that converts each XAI share into 0.1433 shares of SpaceX stock. SpaceX has already invested$2 billion in XAI and Tesla committed another$2 billion last week in XAI. SpaceX shares were valued at$226.59 at the merger versus a$421 in December secondary offering, a gain of roughly 25%.

0:50XAI also closed a$20 billion funding round last month at a post-money valuation of$250 billion. So it went in flat into the merger. The tie-up keeps operations separate because of SpaceX's defense-related regulatory constraints. XAI is It's expected to be operated as a wholly owned subsidiary. SpaceX is still expecting an IPO later this year and is rumored that it could list. The listing could raise as much as$50 billion, which would be the biggest IPO to date. SpaceX is using the merger to push an AI in space thesis at extreme scale. The company has a$1.473 trillion secondary market valuation.

1:32That's up 79 % just from this merger valuation announced this week. SpaceX advisors have approached major index providers, including NASDAQ, to explore rule changes that would allow newly listed companies to enter key indices as soon as the standard months to one year waiting period is over. The goal is faster access to index tracking capital and earlier liquidity as SpaceX targets an IPO later this year. At the center of the talks is the proposed NASDAQ 100 methodology, which QQQ follows, updated that it would create a faster entry pathway. Under the option, companies ranking in the top 40 by market cap versus NASDAQ 100 constituents could be added as early as 15 trading days.

2:19That's very fast. Current rules generally require at least three months. At their current valuation, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic would all qualify. Advisors are also evaluating fast-track options at MSCI, FTSE, Russell, and S &P. The most influential index without a fast entry option remains the S &P 500, which requires U.S. domicile, profitability, and a market cap of at least$22.7 billion. SpaceX filed with the FCC to launch up to 1 million solar-powered satellites designed to function as AI data centers. The company framed the proposal as the most efficient way to meet accelerating AI compute demand and position it as a step towards a Kardashian-2-level civilization.

3:09The filing lands amid regulatory precedent that suggests that the 1 million figure may be a negotiating posture. The FCC recently approved 7 ,500 additional Starlink satellites with deferred authorization on 14 ,988, others in a prior request. There are about 15 ,000 satellites currently in orbit per the European Space Agency, and the growing count is already linked to debris and pollution concerns. Anthropic, the AI large language model company, is preparing a tender offer that would allow some employees to sell shares at a valuation of at least$350 billion. The tender evaluation matches the level being discussed in a funding round that could raise over$20 billion.

3:52Final transaction size will depend on how much stock eligible current and former employees elect to sell. Employee tenders through a secondary market liquidity is becoming a core retention tool in a market where top AI companies stay private for longer. Anthropic has$370 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 5.9 % versus the$350 billion primary round. Anthropic released Opus 4.6, updating its most advanced model months after Opus 4.5's shift in November. The release adds agent teams, which allow multiple agents to split work and run tasks in parallel. The feature is available as a research preview for API users and subscribers.

4:34Opus 4.6 also expands context length to 1 million tokens, matching what Anthropic says its Sonnet offline offers. Anthropic also integrated Claude directly into PowerPoint as a side panel shifting from a workflow where decks were generated elsewhere and then moved into PowerPoint for editing. Goldman Sachs spent the last six months working with embedded Anthropic engineers, or what I call forward deployed engineers, to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two areas, that's trading and transaction accounting and client vetting and onboarding. According to the bank's CIO, Marco Argenti, he said that the bank expects the move to launch the agents soon and frame them as digital co-workers for complex, process-heavy roles.

5:19Goldman CEO David Solomon said in October that the firm is pursuing a multi-year reorganization around generative AI and aims to constrain headcount growth. Argenti said that it's premature to link the agents directly to job losses, but he noted that the bank could reduce reliance on third-party providers as technology ensures. Goldman has been surprised at Claude's performance beyond coding, particularly in compliance and accounting workloads that require applying rules and judgment across large document sets. Waymo, the autonomous car company, is near finalizing a$16 billion funding round that would value the RoboTaxi company at$110 billion.

5:57Alphabet is expected to provide more than three-fourths of the capital with new investors, including Dragoneer, Sequoia Capital, and DST Global, and existing backers, including Andreessen Horowitz and Mutabala Capital, participating. Waymo reported 20 million-plus trips completed and is expanding geographically, including a recent launch in Miami. The company has over$350 million of annual recurring revenue, and Waymo last raised a$5.6 billion Series C in 2024 at a$45 billion valuation. implying the new valuation would be up about$65 billion, or roughly 2.4x. Cerebus, the AI semiconductor company, raised$1 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at$23 billion post-money.

6:41The financing was led by Tiger Global with participation from Benchmark Fidelity and AMD. The valuation is a step change from the$8.1 billion in September, an increase of$14.9 billion, or roughly 2.8x. Cerebrus is competing in AI chips and remote compute services with customers, including Meta, IBM, and Mistral AI. The company also has a multi-year OpenAI agreement tied to its 750 megawatts of compute capacity, building in stages throughout 2028, and described as worth$10 billion. Eleven Labs, the AI voice generator company, raised$500 million in a Series D led by Sequoia, valuing the company$11 billion.

7:23Andreessen Horowitz and Iconic also participated. The round was more than triples the company's valuation from a year earlier and brings total funding to nearly$800 million. The company reported$330 million in annual recurring revenue last year and said it aims to double that this year. 11Labs has moved from early backlash and litigation to licensing partnerships with high-profile talent, including Michael Caine, and product expansion that now includes Voice Marketplace plus an AI music generation. generator. Customers cited included Deutsche Telekom, Deliveroo, and the government of Ukraine. Clay, the AI sales and marketing solution company, is using employee tender offers as a retention tool and recruiting tool as it scales.

8:06That's institutionalizing the secondary market here. The company said it tripled ARR to$100 million in one year and opened another employee tender sale at a$5 billion valuation that marked a 60 % increase from the$3.1 billion round and now in August. That was a primary round. Clay has an AI-powered data orchestration platform that aggregates over 100 data sources into a spreadsheet-like interface to automate B2B lead enrichment and sales prospecting. It leverages Claygent and AI agents to conduct deep web research and waterfall workflows to find verified contact details, score leads, and generate hyper-personalized prospect outreach at scale.

8:51Lotus Health AI raised$35 million in a Series A code led by CRV and Kleiner Perkins bringing total funding to$41 million. The startup offers a free always-on primary care service that says it is available 24-7 in 50 languages with a structure meant to function like a licensed medical practice across all 50 states backed by malpractice insurance and HIPAA compliant systems. Lotus positions its model as AI-led decisioning with human sign-off. It said board-certified physicians from institutions including Stanford, Harvard, and UCSF review diagnoses, lab orders, and prescriptions. Lotus claims it can see 10x as many patients as traditional practice while limiting visits to 15 minutes.

9:37The product is free today and with potential monetization later via subscription, excuse me, for sponsored content. Goodfire raised$150 million at a$1.25 billion valuation to build tools that interpret and debug AI model behavior. V Capital led the Series B, joined by Menlo Ventures and Lightspeed. Founded in 2024, the company focuses on inter-perteability, arguing model weights are effectively unreadable to humans, which forces retaining rather than debugging. Goodfire said it builds the interpreter models that can map model behavior and enable targeted changes described as brain surgery. It's cited as an example where its tools help a partner model identify a novel class of Alzheimer's biomarkers.

10:30Goodfire reported$209 million raised to date and said that it works with customers, including Microsoft, the Mayo Clinic, and Arc Institute, with plans to spend more on compute and hiring. General Catalyst invested $65 million into Accrual as part of two rounds, totaling$75 million, bringing the AI accounting startup out of stealth. The company is part of General Catalyst's$1.5 million creation fund, which targets applied AI in slower adopting industries such as legal and accounting. Accurial was founded by former Brex and Strike leaders and is currently focused on individual tax returns with plans to expand into business audits, taxes, and advisory.

11:09It works with firms including H &R Block, Armanio, and Creative Planning. It's an RA firm. The creation funds model has led in the first two months, then bringing in other investors around three, and it may support acquisitions to accelerate distribution. Fundamental, an AI enterprise decisioning platform company emerged from stealth with$225 million in funding at a$1.2 billion, excuse me, valuation, including a$225 million Series A led by Oak, Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures with Hetz Ventures also participating. Angel investors, including Perplexity CEO Arvind Servinas, Brex co-founder Henrik Duprugas, and Datadog CEO Oliver Pomo.

12:02Company's product nexus is positioned as a large tabular model designed for structured data enterprise data. It is described as deterministic and not transformer-based, targeting workflows where context window limits tender transformer models. such as data sets with billions of rows. Fundamental said it has signed seven-figure contracts with Fortune 500 clients and formed a strategic partnership with AWS to allow deployment from its existing instances. OpenAI, the AI large language model business, launched a standalone Codex app for Apple computers and said it is temporarily available to all ChatGPT users on macOS.

12:43OpenAI reported over 1 million developers use Codex in the past month. Codex launched in April and became generally available in October. The app is positioned as a control layer for managing multiple AI agents in parallel with threads organized by project and agent changes reviewable inside each thread. OpenAI said that the app includes a skills library and it extends agent capabilities beyond code generation. Access is normally tied to paid subscriptions, but OpenAI is temporarily extending code access to free users in the Go tier, which is and is also doubling rate limits for paid plans for a limited time.

13:21OpenAI is currently raising$100 billion at a$830 billion post-money valuation. OpenAI introduced Frontier. It's an enterprise platform designed to help companies build, deploy and govern AI agents across internal systems and data. OpenAI said over 1 million business customers use its technology. CFO Sarah Fryer said enterprise represents about 40 % of the business and could reach 50 % by year end. Frontier is positioned as an intelligence layer that connects siloed applications, ticketing tools, and data warehouses and supports its agents built by OpenAI enterprises and third parties, including Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic.

14:03The product is launching to a limited customer set, including Uber, State Farm, Intuit, and Thermo Fisher, with broader availability expected over the next several months. OpenAI did not disclose pricing. The company argued Frontier is not designed to replace existing software, but to help companies distribute and manage agent deployments with guardrails and control data access. Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks, and see you guys next week.