A quiet war is brewing over the future of the world’s most influential stock index, and NYU Stern Professor Aswath Damodaran warns that the outcome could fundamentally alter what it means to be a passive investor. With SpaceX fresh off the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, and private heavyweights like OpenAI and Anthropic lining up their own mega-cap public listings, a fierce battle has ignited over how quickly these trillion-dollar giants should be fast-tracked into the S&P 500.
"The truth is that a year after they list and start trading, these three companies will still be money losing businesses, with business models that are still works in progress and will remain corporate governance horror stories," Damodaran wrote in his blog post, adding that S&P needs the time to manage the transition of three trillion-dollar companies into the index, even as it confronts the challenge of claiming to be a large cap index that does not include three of the largest market cap stocks in the market.
