E135: 400% increase in SpaceX Starship launches; $270m “investment” fund from Shein; AGI test from OpenAI; Apple, Microsoft off OpenAI board; Axiom Space, Gravitics space station deal; $50m for Athletic Brewing; Neuralink second patient next week; xAI kil

This Week in Pre-IPO Stocks

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Pre-IPO stock valuations = www.agdillon.com/reports
Pre-IPO weekly market update pdf = www.agdillon.com/update
Pre-IPO stock index fact sheet = www.agdillon.com/index
00:07 | Axiom Space, Gravitics space station deal
- Axiom Space, Gravitics develop space stations
- $125m deal to develop new space station
- Drive in-space manufacturing (new industry!)
- SpaceX rockets will deliver new space station to orbit
- Axiom Series C in Aug 2023 put the company at a $2.5b valuation
- Gravitics posted a seed round in Dec 2022 at a $100m valuation
01:41 | $50m for Athletic Brewing
- Non-alcoholic beer
- General Atlantic led
- 10th largest US craft brewery
- 19% non-alcoholic beer market share
- $90m 2023 revenue, 3m cases sold
- $800m valuation
- 40% of Americans … 49% millennials, 61% Gen Z … trying to drink less alcohol
02:25 | Neuralink second patient next week
- Brain computer interface company
- First patient, Noland Arbaugh (Jan 2024), can control a computer with just thoughts
- Goal is to mitigate chip “thread” retraction and improve thread placement
- $7.7b secondary market valuation, +122% vs its Nov 2023 round
03:22 | xAI kills Oracle deal
- AI large language model company
- Owned by Elon Musk, X owns 25%
- xAI was renting 24k Nvidia chips from Oracle
- Deal ended as xAI building 100k Nvidia chip facility in Tennessee
- $24b secondary market valuation, flat to its May 2024 round
04:03 | $270m “investment” fund from Shein
- Fast fashion company, direct to consumer
- $270m into UK/Europe to combat industry waste, support regional brands
- IPO expected on London Stock Exchange
- Headquartered in Singapore, developed market company?
- $66b valuation in its May 2023 Series G
04:53 | AGI test from OpenAI
- AI large language model business
- New test details exactly what an artificial general intelligence (AGI) is
- 5 “Levels”, OpenAI currently at Level 1
- Level 5 has AI performing organizational work, or AI has autonomous decision making
- CEO Altman believes AGI will be accomplished by 2030
- $105b secondary market valuation, +22% vs its Apr 2024 last round
05:44 | Apple, Microsoft off OpenAI board
- Microsoft is $13b investor in OpenAI
- OpenAI to power Apple Siri assistant
- US/EU regulators voices antitrust concerns
- Both companies recused themselves from board observer roles
- OpenAI plans to consistently meet with both in future, so no real change?
06:35 | 400% increase in SpaceX Starship launches
- Space payload delivery and satellite internet company (Starlink)
- Seek FAA approval to increase from 4 to 25 Starship launches
- Starship has 4x the payload capacity of the current Falcon 9 and 97% less expensive per launch ($2m vs $62m)
- $199b secondary market valuation, +10% vs its Jan 2024 round
- Note that SpaceX is currently closing a tender round at a $210b valuation
07:32 | Pre-IPO -0.23% for week, +62.79% for last 1yr
- www.agdillon.com/reports for full pdf
- Up week: Chime +13.6%, CoreWeave +8.5%, SpaceX +2.3%, Anthropic +1.8%, ByteDance +1.3%
- Down week: Groq -21.9%, Ramp -8.5%, eToro -2.0%, Notion -1.2%, Scale AI -1.0%
- Top valuations: ByteDance $289b, SpaceX $199b, OpenAI $105b, Stripe $78b, Databricks $44b
08:23 | 2024 Pre-IPO Stock Vintage Index week performance
- www.agdillon.com/index for pdf with constituents level performance by year
- 2024 Vintage Index top contributors since inception: Rippling +107%, Anduril +56%, Revolut +56%, Klarna +45%, Epic Games +37%
- Key metric averages for all Vintage Indexes 5 years old or older…
444% cumulative return since inception
61% realized, distributed to