The rocket and satellite company is considering raising more than $25bn in an offering that could come as early as June, according to a person familiar with the plans. Retail demand is expected to be substantial, despite the significant capital requirements and operational risks associated with commercial space ventures. Shay Boloor of Futurum Equities Research said enthusiasm is likely to overwhelm concerns about Musk's unconventional approach. He said the IPO is going to be the 'craziest' in the 'history of the stock market,' and noted that a $1.5tn valuation could surge above $2tn once trading begins. Musk's confrontations with regulators and past governance controversies remain part of the risk profile. The Tesla CEO has previously clashed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and threatened to leave Tesla earlier this year over compensation disputes. Investors said such drama is intrinsic to backing high-growth ventures run by powerful founders. Institutional exposure already exists. GAMCO Investors owns SpaceX shares through a spectrum deal with EchoStar, though it is undecided on participating in an IPO. Neuberger Berman holds unlisted shares and believes strong fundamentals underpin demand, citing the combination of a proven launch business and the rapid expansion of Starlink services. Portfolio manager Dan Hanson said SpaceX offers both 'the steak and the sizzle.'...

Good morning & happy end of the week! Fridays are for the good stuff, and today's newsletter is exactly like that ' We're diving into Stripe Agentic Commerce suite and the new era of AI-powered payments (what it's all about & why it's huge, why FinTech giant's strategy here is brilliant & what to expect next + bonus dive into Stripe's quest to become the financial backbone of the AI economy & 100+ battle'tested tools and frameworks to accelerate your AI projects insde), and Klarna, which is now moving deeper into digital assets (what their Privy parntership is all about & why it makes sense + bonus deep dives into Klarna & Affirm inside). So let's just jump straight into the finnovative stuff '' The BIG News '' $106 billion FinTech titan Stripe just introduced its Agentic Commerce Suite. And honestly, this isn't only big' More importantly, it represents a pivotal strategic initiative to establish the financial technology company as the foundational infrastructure layer for AI-driven commerce....

In college, I took a pair of Shakespeare survey courses that taught me two divergent but complementary ways of reading classic fiction. The professor in one class frequently asked us to put ourselves in the characters' shoes'by asking us, for instance, to contemplate how heavy our heads might be if we, like Henry IV, wore the crown, or to imagine ourselves as Juliet on the balcony. The other professor emphasized everything in the plays that was alien to modern ears: how, for example, King Lear's resentful banishment of his daughter Cordelia didn't necessarily read as cruel, because it reflected a world that prized fealty over love. I suspect the second teacher would have been intrigued by a young academic field, the subject of a new Atlantic article by Gal Beckerman, that questions our tendency to see ourselves mirrored in figures of the past. Beckerman focuses on Rob Boddice, a historian who challenges the assumption that 'people in the past were just like us, with slight tweaks for their choice of hats and standards of personal hygiene.' We oversimply feelings, Boddice says'they are not nearly as universal as we think they are; even emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and disgust may not have existed in the same way for people who lived a few centuries ago that they do for us. In fact, some of Boddice's earliest research showed that humans' experience of events changed frequently; an activity 'that once caused delight' could, a few decades later, 'elicit revulsion.' A medieval carpenter who banged his thumb with a hammer, at a time when people thought differently about God, medicine, work, and even pain, might react to the blow in ways that would confuse us....

Lumexa priced the offering within its target range, achieving a multi-billion-dollar valuation. The company operates in the medical imaging space, a sector that has attracted sustained private equity interest. The listing provides partial liquidity for Welsh Carson, which backed Lumexa during its expansion phase. The IPO comes as sponsors increasingly test equity markets after a prolonged slowdown in exits. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....