Here’s the thing about hot IPOs: they’re designed to make you feel like you’re missing out. A company everyone knows goes public, the stock doubles before lunch, and suddenly you’re watching CNBC anchors breathlessly announce “the next great technology platform” while you’re stuck on the sidelines.
That’s exactly when you’re most vulnerable.
Let me tell you what actually happened with Figma. You probably haven’t heard of it, but your design team definitely has. Adobe tried buying them for $20 billion back in 2022, but regulators said no thanks. So Figma went public on its own—and it became the perfect case study in how IPO structures are rigged.
Figma priced at $33 and opened at $115. Everyone went nuts. But buried in the fine print of their lockup agreement was a little detail almost nobody read: if the stock traded 25% above the IPO price for five consecutive days, insiders could sell early instead of waiting the standard six months.
The stock opened 158% above that threshold. Boom—lockup triggered on Day 1. By day 36, the people who actually understood the structure were selling at $80 while retail investors were still buying. Eight months later? Figma was at $22. Down 81% from the peak.
That wasn’t a failed IPO. That was the playbook.
And now they’re running it again—except this time with SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. We’re talking about $3 trillion in combined valuations. Every single one of these deals is virtually guaranteed to use the same structural setup that took Figma from $115 to $22.
Here’s the brutal truth: when you buy at the IPO open, you’re not making a smart investment. You’re providing “exit liquidity” for people who got in a decade ago. You’re the sucker at the poker table.
So where’s the actual money?
First, don’t buy at the open. That pop? That’s the gift to insiders. By the time you click “buy,” it’s already been delivered.
Second—and this is what most investors miss—buy the family, not the headline. Every AI IPO has publicly traded proxies you can buy right now. SpaceX has Alphabet (which owns 6.11% of the company). Anthropic has Amazon and Nvidia. OpenAI has Microsoft. These are the picks and shovels—the companies that make the infrastructure these AI giants need to function.
No lockup risk. No allocation problem. No premium built on a float that was intentionally tiny.
Third, watch the lockup calendar. Once a company goes public, the most important dates aren’t earnings—they’re lockup expirations. That’s when insider selling hits and the stock finally trades at something closer to reality.
Cerebras was the dress rehearsal. SpaceX is the main event. The institutions already know what’s coming and have their allocations lined up. They’ll be the sellers on Day 1.
The real trade isn’t waiting for the bell. It’s already happening in the supply chain and proxy stocks. That’s where the smart money is moving right now.
