The race to launch products around SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic begins long before the first trade.
Long before the hype machine hit full throttle last week—and when Elon Musk was only a poor billionaire—a large swath of the ETF industry was preparing for the SpaceX IPO. As we speak, they remain in the process of getting ready for future offerings.
Think Anthropic, Perplexity and OpenAI—from the red carpet on Wall Street, the market is giving IPO vibes.
“For products specifically designed around pre-IPO or newly public companies, sponsors often work months in advance to ensure the prospectus and risk disclosures as well as operational infrastructure are already in place. That preparation allows them to move quickly once the company goes public,” says Aga Kuplinska, SVP of Product Development at Tidal Financial Group, winner of six 2025 ETF Express awards, including Best US White Label Platform.
According to Kuplinska, that preparation revolves around regulatory groundwork, flexible product mandates and securing derivative counterparties long before a company reaches the public market.
The goal is simple: reduce time-to-market to meet investor demand.
“First-mover advantage in ETFs is real and well-documented,” she says. “The majority of flows tend to go to the first product in a category, and that lead compounds because assets bring liquidity, tighter spreads and shelf space.”
The demand is real
The demand is already visible in ETF flows.
According to Inès Barahhou, CFA, Advisory and Quantitative Solutions at Kepler Cheuvreux, the parent company of Trackinsight, thematic investors rotated into trending areas.
“While allocations to defence moderated, interest in space-related strategies increased, benefiting from growing investor interest fuelled by the news flow surrounding a potential SpaceX IPO. Positioned at the intersection of digitalisation, infrastructure and national security, the space theme is also increasingly viewed as a differentiated way to gain exposure to several of the market’s most powerful structural trends,” says Barahhou.
Morningstar sees a similar pattern.
Monika Calay, the firm’s Director of UK Manager Research, cites data that shows inflows of USD7.9 billion into four US funds (three ETFs and one mutual fund) that had pre-IPO private equity stakes in SpaceX. Calling the demand “real,” Calay notes that anticipation around the SpaceX IPO spread to Europe and “supported demand for the broad tech theme with the VanEck Space Innovators UCITS ETF among the top 10 flow-gathering ETFs in May.”
Getting ready ahead of the frenzy
The trend suggests that many ETF issuers are being proactive ahead of big-name IPOs. We saw it with the Direxion Daily SpaceX Bull 2X ETF (LOFF) and other products built around SpaceX and launched alongside the company’s debut.
“What’s happening now is that products are designed, filed and staged ahead of the listing, so the fund arrives at the same moment as the stock rather than months later,” says Kuplinska. “The ETF wrapper can move on the IPO’s clock. That does not mean ETFs are participating in the capital-raising process itself, but it does mean they are becoming more integrated into the broader lifecycle of public market companies.”
Speed matters, but timing matters just as much.
“As a result, ETFs are evolving from passive observers of the IPO market into active participants in the ecosystem surrounding new listings,” adds Kuplinska. “They are still reacting to companies becoming public, but the preparation now often begins many months before the first trade occurs.”
