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SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks and Canva could become some of the biggest IPO stories of the next cycle. The obvious debate will be valuation: are these companies really worth the numbers being discussed, or are public investors going to pay too much for private-market hype?
I think that debate matters, but there is another angle that feels easier to understand. Whether you are bullish or bearish on the IPO prices, these companies all depend on physical infrastructure. AI needs data centers, power, cooling, chips, networking equipment and grid capacity. Space needs satellites, launch systems, manufacturing, ground stations and a huge industrial supply chain. Payments and data platforms also scale through more compute, more storage and more energy use.
That is where metals come into the conversation. Copper is tied to grids, cabling, substations, transformers and data center buildout. Aluminum matters for industrial infrastructure, aerospace, transmission and manufacturing. Gold is different, but it still has electronics exposure and also works as a macro hedge when markets get nervous.
So instead of only asking which mega IPO will win, I’m also looking at what has to be built underneath all of them. The platform names will get the headlines, but the physical layer is what lets the whole AI, space and data economy actually function.
That is why I’m keeping copper, aluminum, gold and critical minerals on the screen while everyone argues about IPO valuations. The IPOs may be exciting, but the infrastructure behind them might be the cleaner theme to research.
What are people watching on the metals/infrastructure side producers, equipment names, aluminum stocks, gold miners, or smaller exploration names?