Is SpaceX's $75B IPO Pulling Capital Out of Crypto?

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  June 11, 2026 at 15:24  |  41:39  |  Unchained (Chopping Block)
Speakers
Tom Shaughnessy — Co-Founder, Delphi Digital

Summary

Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital analyzes capital rotation from crypto into big AI IPOs like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. He expects these IPOs to rally initially on low floats and passive flows, but warns that enterprise cost-cutting and cheap open-source alternatives could hurt their medium-term revenue. He also highlights specific crypto/AI projects he favors, including Venice, Grass, News Research (Hermes agent), and Ambient.

  • Crypto market outflows are partly driven by capital rotating to AI IPOs and fear narratives.
  • SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPOs are set to perform well out of the gate due to low public floats and index demand.
  • Medium-term risk: enterprises are hitting spending limits on API models, and open-source inference providers offer far cheaper substitutes.
  • Venice is praised for privacy-focused open-source AI access with strong usage growth.
  • Grass is highlighted as a key data provider for AI labs, using a decentralized node network.
  • News Research's Hermes agent gains traction as an open-source harness outperforming centralized competitors.
  • Ambient is a proof-of-useful-work AI project that the speaker finds exciting.
  • Chinese open-source models may eventually close source, potentially benefiting US frontier labs.
Ideas
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 12:47
SpaceX IPO surges on low float
After the initial IPO window, AI IPOs (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) could face a medium-term slowdown because enterprises are hitting a wall on API spend, open-source inference providers offer 90-99% cheaper alternatives, and public disclosures will reveal metrics like payback periods and margins that may disappoint.
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 18:17
AI lab IPOs pop initially
After the initial IPO window, AI IPOs (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) could face a medium-term slowdown because enterprises are hitting a wall on API spend, open-source inference providers offer 90-99% cheaper alternatives, and public disclosures will reveal metrics like payback periods and margins that may disappoint.
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 21:19
Hermes agent dominates AI usage
News Research's Hermes agent is an open-source AI harness that has achieved 3-4x the usage of OpenClaw on Open Router, with 150k GitHub stars and thousands of contributors, demonstrating that open-source community velocity can outcompete centralized labs.
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 38:55
Venice wins on privacy and open access
Venice is doing an incredible job providing open-source AI model access with strong privacy guarantees and censorship resistance, meeting enterprise needs and showing off-the-charts usage growth.
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 39:18
Grass supplies essential AI training data
Grass is an incredible company that uses 3 million user nodes to gather real-world data for AI labs, a deep moat use case, and Delphi Ventures invested early.
Tom Shaughnessy Co-Founder, Delphi Digital 39:37
Ambient builds useful-work AI model
Ambient is a proof-of-useful-work AI project that will offer one hyper-optimized model, and the team is really excited about its potential.
Up Next

This Unchained (Chopping Block) video, published June 11, 2026, features Tom Shaughnessy discussing SPCX, OPENAI, ANTHROPIC, News Research, VENICE, GRASS, AMBIENT. 6 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Tom Shaughnessy  · Tickers: SPCX, OPENAI, ANTHROPIC, News Research, VENICE, GRASS, AMBIENT