First things first: No, this isn’t an ad. As if CommSec would want to admit that HotCopper is just as popular as its own website. But users of the popular Australian retail stockbroking app awoke to a curious email Tuesday.
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See below a screenshot of an email sent out to users this finance journalist absolutely hasn’t lifted from a popular stock subreddit without credit:
Apparently, Commonwealth Bank’s (ASX:CBA) CommSec app will be the vehicle through which Australians can snap up shares in the vibes-based IPO of the century (so far). The CBA on Tuesday referred to itself as the “Lead Australian Retail Broker to the IPO,” which, from SpaceX’s point of view, makes sense – CommSec far outstrips similar investing apps like CMC Invest and Stake in popularity.
That’s a big market edge in Oz, a country with a superannuation pool over A$4T, or US$2.86T – worth roughly what SpaceX reckons its value is worth.
Most interesting perhaps is CBA, via CommSec’s EDM channel, has been careful to describe the IPO as “potential.” U.S. sources are treating the listing as a sure go-ahead, with a probable NASDAQ debut next month, but where the potential lies could be in whether or not SpaceX does file an Australian prospectus.
In a country where our stock market has been boring as bat droppings for the better part of the last three months, it’d probably be welcome. So long as the debut goes well.
I’ve already used up a fair amount of pixels discussing the SpaceX IPO for this website and my own, and I’m not suggesting anybody should go right ahead and buy shares in the company, set to be valued at US$2T. Yes, T for trillion.
I don’t think anybody who pays even fleeting attention to the world of U.S. Wall Street needs an explainer on why the valuation for SpaceX is a little bit ambitious, and why Elon Musk’s extracurricular activities across the last few years throw into question whether or not he needs more on his plate.
And I am not suggesting in any way CommSec is by any means acting disingenuously, or that Commonwealth is, or that the company ought not to be saddling up to SpaceX in a bid to get friendly. After all, this will be the biggest IPO in history. It’s quite exciting.
I have already put to (digital) paper my view the SpaceX IPO will probably go quite well. No, I don’t own shares in it, and I don’t know if I have the risk appetite to do so. I’d be surprised to see it stumble, though, at least at first.
While some are flabbergasted by the valuation, the SpaceX IPO is a fairly on-brand proposition for Wall Street right now, which has obviously divorced itself from macroeconomic reality.
The term “AI” shows up in the SpaceX IPO filing more than 1,200 times.
Clearly, there’s enough play money floating around from the investment banks down to retail punters to keep the U.S. stock market afloat, and that’s a good thing.
SpaceX absolutely will be a vibes test for the market wholemeal. Both because what the company is proposing at the headline level – space colonisation, data centres in space, space travel – is actually at complete odds with where SpaceX makes most of its money.
And that’s Starlink, Musk’s private Wi-Fi-by-satellite company. Some 70% of SpaceX’s revenues in 2025, of US$20B, were from Starlink, but none of that had anything to do with sending anything into space.
Instead, the lion’s share of Starlink’s 2025 revenues came from selling AI-giant Anthropic, which produces Claude, responsible for the Saaspocalypse, which I prefer to call the AI cannibal trade – all of its compute (GPU) power needed to make its AI products work.
Anthropic currently pays Musk’s Starlink over US$1B a month to be provided with the computer power it needs to make its Claude product work. At the same time, SpaceX is trying to undercut OpenAI and Anthropic by listing on the NASDAQ first and being the first on the hype train.
This is getting off track now when it comes to CBA and CommSec, but given what this IPO represents and the context in which it’s born, it makes complete sense that the world’s most expensive bank stock is getting in on the action.
What a time to be alive.
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