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TGIF! Tired of IPO news yet? You’re living in the wrong timeline, buddy.

In this issue:

Is it just me, or does every lofty promise of innovation and a new golden age end in some version of magic beans in space? Who knows, maybe I’m just seeing stars. Let’s do this. 👇

OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar told employees this week that the company "will be a public company in 2027" and possibly even sooner if their growth keeps accelerating. For the first time, folks, we’ve got an actual timeline.

It should also be noted that the numbers backing this up are wild. OpenAI's revenue is up 35% this quarter alone, their annual run rate just hit $40 billion (double what it was at the end of last year), and 20 million people are using their AI coding tools every single week. At an $852 billion valuation, this IPO is going to be one of the biggest tech debuts ever, to say the least.

Meanwhile, competitor Anthropic is also racing to go public, potentially as early as September. Friar told employees not to stress about it: "We are running our own race." A bunch of executives have bounced from OpenAI lately, which has investors watching for signs of instability. But OpenAI's leadership is brushing off the departures as normal turnover that just gets extra scrutiny because everyone's watching. Either way, when this thing hits the public markets, quarterly earnings calls are going to get a lot more interesting.

SpaceX filed plans for up to 1 million satellites that could run AI data centers in orbit. Blue Origin wants 51,600 satellites doing roughly the same thing. Google is working on something called Project Suncatcher. And it’s all based on a thesis of frugality: solar power is free in space, launch costs keep dropping, and electricity on Earth keeps getting more expensive.

But here's where it gets messy: nobody knows how to insure any of this. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware floating above Earth, and insurance companies are essentially staring at spreadsheets going "uhhh."

The risks are genuinely gnarly. Radiation fries equipment, debris smashes into satellites, and if (when) something breaks, you can't send a technician; you need another rocket launch. And the usual catastrophe models that insurers use (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods) don't translate to orbit at all.

Right now, only about 30 insurance companies worldwide even touch space coverage, handling maybe $500-750 million in premiums annually. That's nowhere close to what would be needed to cover what Musk and Bezos want to build. The insurers who crack this risk-pricing problem first could own an entirely new market. Until then, a lot of these orbital ambitions are stuck in the cool concept phase, but keep an eye out for anyone willing to step in and make this happen.

In this episode of This Week in Tech, the hosts unpack a week where Mark Zuckerberg makes the case for open AI, regulators tighten their grip on platform power, and the growing dependence on connected technology exposes new risks.

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That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake