To get into the S&P 500, a company is supposed to make some money. The sum of its four quarters of earnings has to be positive—at least GAAP wise—and so does its most recent quarter. That’s a pretty basic rule, decades old and it’s the reason Tesla sat outside of the index until the end of 2020, years after it had become one of the most valuable companies on earth.
Soon, that rule will be broken, likely three times. On purpose.
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are all independently preparing to go public, at different speeds; SpaceX has released its S-1, Anthropic filed for IPO on Monday and OpenAI is rumored to next quarter. None of those companies yet make money; in fact, SpaceX lost billions last year, and OpenAI and Anthropic are also not profitable. Yet, when they go public, they will be ranked among the largest companies in America; and quickly begin dominating 401Ks and index funds.
