Blockbuster public offerings from companies involved in the global artificial intelligence race could be an enduring feature of the industry, Min-Liang Tan, CEO at Singaporean gaming company Razer, said Thursday, ahead of a series of widely anticipated public debuts from major AI companies.

“I think with this host of new companies going out into public capital markets, it’s super exciting, but I think this would be just the beginning,” Tan told CNBC’s Joanna Ossinger at Singapore’s SuperAI convention, referring to IPO filings from tech giants SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.

“We’re going to see a second generation, a third generation, different waves coming through,” he added.

Tan’s remarks come a day before Elon Musk’s SpaceX — which includes xAI, the business unit overseeing X and Musk’s Grok model — makes its public debut, targeting a historic $1.77 trillion valuation in its IPO.

OpenAI filed to go public Monday afternoon stateside, hot on the heels of its rival Anthropic, which submitted an IPO filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission a week earlier.

Anthropic closed its Series H funding round on May 28 at a $965 billion valuation, edging out OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in March.

Unlike the frenzy of filings from the AI companies set to make their Wall Street debuts, Tan’s Razer delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in April 2022 — after five years on the exchange — in a move that he said was to allow them to focus on AI development.

Razer’s privatization deal saw a consortium of investors led by co-founder Tan and Hong Kong-based private equity firm CVC Capital Partners offer up to 10.79 billion Hong Kong dollars ($1.38 billion) to buyout shares they did not own at HK$2.82 apiece. The company debuted in 2017 with its IPO priced at HK$3.88 per share.

The company said in February that it had invested over $600 million in AI development, and has launched a suite of wearable AI products for its gaming-focused core target audience.

Tan touted Project Motoko — the company’s AI headset that it launched in January at CES — onstage at SuperAI, which provides users real-time translation services, cooking guidance, and repair instructions.

Razer’s Other AI hardware offerings include a workstation designed for heavy AI workloads and Ava, an AI desktop companion.

“We are all-in on AI,” Tan said, adding that the company was exploring how AI could exhibit human-like personalities and emotions.

Oil prices fell Friday as the U.S. and Iran neared an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though a senior Trump administration official said the outcome still was not certain.

U.S. crude oil futures were down 3.4% to $84.74 per barrel by 1:44 p.m. ET. Brent futures, the international benchmark, lost 3.5% to $87.23.

The Trump administration official said they see an 80% chance that the U.S. and Iran will sign an agreement in the coming days.

“It’s not 100%,” the official said. “Their system is very complicated. Most of the people that we’ve been speaking to and most of the people who have authority within their system want to sign this deal, but not everybody.”

The deal would reopen Hormuz, lift the U.S. naval blockade, dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and remove its enriched uranium, the official said. Iran would receive financial incentives if they comply with the agreement, the official said.

The agreement outlined by the Trump administration contradicted a document released earlier Friday by Iranian state news agency Mehr that seemed more favorable to Tehran.

The Iranian document said the U.S. would agree to withdraw its forces from around the Islamic Republic, lift its naval blockade in 30 days, and provide $300 billion in reconstruction money to Tehran. Iran would reopen Hormuz in 30 days but under arrangements set by Tehran.

The senior administration official said Iranian hardliners were trying to make the deal look more favorable to Tehran to satisfy their domestic constituencies. President Donald Trump denied the Iranian text represented the agreement reached between Washington and Tehran.

“The terms that Iran leaked out to the Fake News have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Trump disparaged the Iranians as “very dishonorable people to deal with” who do not negotiate in good faith. He accused Iran of launching a drone at an Indian vessel overnight, denouncing the attack as unacceptable.

“They better get their act together, and FAST!” the president said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has mediated U.S.-Iran talks, said an “incessant misinformation campaign” was being “waged by those who want to sabotage a peace deal.”

“Setting aside the noise, we can confirm that a final, agreed upon text of the peace deal has been reached and Pakistan is now working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps,” Sharif said.

“Peace has never been this close as it is now,” the prime minister said.

Shortly after Trump denied the Iranian report, Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said in a social post that a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran “has never been closer.”

“Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content,” Araghchi said. “In line with our responsible and transparent approach, all details will be shared with the public in due course.”

Trump then reposted Araghchi’s social media post….

Elon Musk‘s SpaceX will need to achieve at least two of its three “moonshots” to justify its huge valuation, a former Tesla board member told CNBC Friday. 

Musk’s reusable rocket company is looking to raise $75 billion, selling 555.6 million shares for $135 apiece, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The deal values SpaceX at $1.77 trillion, making it the seventh most-valuable U.S. company, ahead of Tesla.

Venture capitalist and former Tesla board member Steve Westly told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that pricing SpaceX’s imminent IPO is going to be hard to predict, as its three core companies are “completely disparate.” 

In addition to its space business, Musk’s company owns the Starlink satellite internet service, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue and is the only profitable unit. It also includes xAI, which Musk merged with SpaceX in February.

“SpaceX is three moonshots in one company, but I think they’re going to need to make at least two of these moonshots successful to keep that $2 trillion valuation,” said Westly, who also founded venture fund, The Westly Group.

SpaceX has achieved its goal of becoming the largest IPO on record.

The number of underlying businesses could expand further still, as speculation builds that Musk could eventually merge Tesla into SpaceX. CNBC reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter, that Tesla and SpaceX already have a laundry list of shared resources, and Musk has discussed with colleagues the possibility of folding the companies together.

Westly told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal that a move to fold Tesla into SpaceX is “absolutely likely.”

“It’s going to be a tricky one. There will be a lot of governance issues, people will have complaints about that, but… I think there’s a good chance that ends up happening,” he added.

Luxury stocks saw a sharp uptick after a proposed Iran-U.S. deal outlined a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and lifting of U.S. oil sanctions, according to Iran state media on Friday.

Shares of LVMH, Gucci-owner Kering, and Hermes were up about 5%. Swiss group Richemont rose about 3.4% while the pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose 1.8%.

Luxury stocks across the board have been hard hit by the Iran war, as the Middle East was a fast-growing market for the otherwise largely muted sector. The war broke out in late February, just as the sector had begun to show signs of recovery after a years-long slump prompted by soft demand from Chinese consumers, formerly one of the sector’s main growth drivers.

The war has weighed on sales of many luxury brands, even as the region accounts for a mid-single-digit percentage of the average of total sales.

Analysts have flagged that the risk to revenue lies not only in muted activity in the region itself, but also in reduced tourist flows and a hit to the so-called “feel-good factor” where consumers decrease discretionary spending amid a gloomier economic outlook.

In April, LVMH flagged a 1% negative impact from the Iran war in the previous quarter, cutting quarterly organic growth in half, as the conflict overshadowed underlying improvements.

The following week, CEO Bernard Arnault warned of a “world catastrophe” if the conflict in the Middle East was not resolved, saying it may result in a serious negative impact on the world economy.

The tentative peace deal between the U.S. and Iran includes a commitment from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The effective closure of the narrow waterway, which normally carries around a fifth of the world’s oil supply, has led to global economic ramifications, with energy prices soaring and an uptick in inflation.

The 14-point memorandum of understanding is subject to finalization.

President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that the U.S. had made “a great settlement of the war,” but caveated that it was subject to the “finalization of documents.”

The draft version of the Iran-U.S. memorandum of understanding includes a commitment from the U.S. to lift oil sanctions and a commitment from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media reported Friday.

The 14-point document dictates that final negotiations will not begin until the release of half of Iran’s frozen funds, the suspension of Iran’s oil sanctions, and the lifting of the naval blockade, the Mehr News Agency reported.

President Donald Trump on Thursday had claimed that the U.S. “just made a great settlement of the war with Iran,” subject to the “finalization of documents.”

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With college graduates jeering mentions of artificial intelligence at commencement speeches, and voices as disparate as the Pope and technology giant Anthropic warning of the risks of unmitigated AI development, public sentiment toward the technology has sobered considerably since its early euphoria.

Yet despite mounting public backlash, global AI usage has surged to record highs. OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached one billion monthly app users, or MAUs, in May, according to recent estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Other AI apps including Anthropic’s Claude made triple-digit year-over-year percentage gains in users, the data company said.

With its billion-MAU figure — achieved roughly 3.5 years after its November 2022 launch — ChatGPT became the fastest app ever to reach the milestone, surpassing the previous record set by Google Maps, which took around five years after launch to reach the same volume of usage, Sensor Tower said.

OpenAI, which did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment, said in February that ChatGPT saw more than 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile platforms and claimed it had more than six times the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI platform.

According to Sensor Tower, OpenAI’s market-leading large language model was trailed by offerings from its competitors, including Google’s Gemini, ByteDance’s Doubao and its overseas variant Dola, as well as Claude from rival developer Anthropic.

But while ChatGPT enjoys a significant lead in monthly users, rival models are quickly catching up. Monthly usage of Claude and Meta AI respectively rose by 640% and 973% year-on-year, compared to ChatGPT’s 62%, per Sensor Tower estimates.

Despite its “early mover advantage,” usage of ChatGPT’s competition has grown on tangible model improvements, as well as more positive market sentiment, Abe Yousef, Sensor Tower’s senior insights analyst, told CNBC.

Yousef cited OpenAI’s February deal with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy its models on classified Pentagon networks as an instance where public unease drove usership.

ChatGPT uninstalls surged around 295% day-on-day on Feb. 28 — the day after OpenAI announced its Pentagon agreement, according to Sensor Tower data.

Anthropic gained a boost from sentiment toward ChatGPT, as Claude soared to the App Store’s top spot that same weekend, outpacing ChatGPT by U.S. downloads for the first time, after it refused involvement in Pentagon operations.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI have recently begun proceedings for widely anticipated public listings, with Sam Altman’s OpenAI submitting its IPO filing Monday…

For nearly two decades, some of the world’s most prominent investors quietly accumulated stakes in SpaceX while the rocket maker remained largely off-limits to the public markets.

Now, with Elon Musk‘s company seeking a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion in its initial public offering, those early bets are poised to generate some of the largest paper gains in venture capital history.

Among the biggest beneficiaries are veteran stock picker Ron Baron, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest and mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments. Also poised to win are venture firms including Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz as well as hedge funds such as D1 Capital Partners and Coatue Management. Select pension funds and endowments are also set to share in the windfall.

The gains are striking for investors who backed SpaceX before its success became obvious. Baron first invested in 2017 through employee tender offers when the company was valued at less than $22 billion and has since participated in 27 funding rounds.

By the end of March, SpaceX accounted for 33% of assets in the $10.4 billion Baron Partners Fund and 23% of the Baron Asset Fund, making it one of the firm’s most consequential investments.

“We think that SpaceX will become the largest, most profitable company on the planet,” Baron said during an investor webcast this week. His firm has invested about $2 billion in the company over the years, a stake that has grown to roughly $12 billion, he said.

Still early in its value creation

Wood’s Ark Venture Fund has also been a major beneficiary of SpaceX’s rapid rise. The rocket maker accounted for 11.4% of the fund’s net assets as of March 31, making it the largest holding in the portfolio.

Wood said Ark views SpaceX as far more than a launch provider. “Through Starship, Starlink and the acquisition of xAI, we believe SpaceX is building vertically integrated AI infrastructure for a much larger space economy,” she told CNBC.

The investment also reflects Ark’s broader thesis around technological convergence. SpaceX sits at the intersection of several of the firm’s core innovation themes, including artificial intelligence, robotics and energy storage. Wood believes the company’s next phase of growth could be driven not only by its existing Falcon 9 launch business and Starlink satellite network, but also by Starship, the next-generation rocket system that could open new commercial opportunities in space.

“For long-term shareholders, an IPO would provide broader access to a company that we believe remains early in its value creation,” Wood said.

No traditional asset manager may…