The rocket-builders are preparing to swallow the entire IPO market, and the algorithm writers are choosing audit targets for the IRS. With not enough electricity, AI is using it—someone is sending GPUs to space.
1｜SpaceX targets a $75 billion IPO, aiming to swallow the entire tech listings market
SpaceX filed its prospectus with the SEC, targeting $75 billion in financing at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The largest IPO in human history is 2.5 times Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion record, exceeding the combined total U.S. IPO fundraising in 2024 and 2025. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are underwriting, with a goal to list in June.
After acquiring xAI, SpaceX is simultaneously a satellite internet provider (Starlink: 9 million users, profit over $8 billion), a defense contractor, and an AI infrastructure company. Its valuation has grown sixfold over six years—from $46 billion to $1.75 trillion—up 38 times.
Behind SpaceX are OpenAI and Anthropic. How much market liquidity will a $75 billion fundraising round absorb, and what valuation can the next AI unicorns in line still command? That’s a bigger question than SpaceX itself.
(Sources: Bloomberg / Axios / The Information / Barron’s)
2｜A new dimension in the AI infrastructure race: space GPUs, Europe borrowing, 7.5GW wind power projects frozen
Starcloud closed a $170 million Series A at a valuation of $1.1 billion, becoming the fastest unicorn in YC history—just 17 months from Demo Day. The company used $3 million in seed funding to launch its first satellite carrying H100 GPUs, aiming to build an orbital data center network of 88,000 satellites. With not enough electricity on Earth, someone has started sending GPUs to space.
Mistral borrowed $830 million from seven banks to build a Paris data center, equipped with 13,800 GB300 GPUs, going live in the second quarter. In Europe, AI funding doesn’t come from VC—it comes from banks.
In the U.S., the Pentagon has frozen military approvals for 30 wind power projects totaling 7.5 GW. The Clean Power Association has limited the Department of Defense to respond by April 8, or else it will sue. As AI companies scramble to build data centers, power approvals get stuck in a pile of paperwork.
(Sources: TechCrunch / SpaceNews / Reuters / Axios / Clean Power Association)
3｜Palantir selects audit targets for the IRS, as AI moves into the core of federal law enforcement
Documents obtained by Wired show that last year the IRS paid Palantir $1.8 million to improve a custom tool called SNAP. The tool screens for “highest-value” audit, tax-collection, and potential criminal investigation targets from legacy systems. Extracting key information about contracts, vehicles, and vendors from unstructured data, the tool replaces more than 700 outdated legacy screening systems the IRS has run for decades.
The bigger engineering effort is the “mega API.” Palantir is working with IRS engineers to build a unified data interface layer, aiming to become the “reading hub for all IRS systems.” Democratic Senator has asked Palantir to explain this “searchable super database” plan, calling it a “monitoring nightmare.”
Since 2018, Palantir has received more than $180 million from the IRS across 26 contracts. The same company tracks immigrants for ICE, selects audit targets for the IRS, and integrates government data for DOGE—the federal government’s data hub is being built by a private company valued at over one trillion.
(Sources: Wired / Tax Notes / U.S. Senate Finance Committee)
4｜Day 31 of the Iran war: Trump says he wants to “seize oil,” and Marines are in place
Trump has openly said he wants to invade Iran to “seize oil,” calling opponents “idiots.” The 31st and 11th Marine Expeditionary Units have arrived in the Middle East, and the 82nd Airborne Division is on the way. The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is preparing “weeks of ground operations,” including seizing the oil hub on Khark Island. The war narrative has shifted from “retaliation” to “controlling resources.”
The IAEA has confirmed that Iran’s heavy-water reactor is no longer operating. Oil prices have risen to $116 per barrel, up more than 50% since the war began. EIA data shows that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged from 20 million barrels per day before the war to sharply lower levels, forcing Gulf countries to cut production by tens of millions of barrels per day.
A Macquarie analyst believes Trump is following a “TACO” timeline (Trump Always Chickens Out), expecting the conflict to end in six weeks—now in week five. The numbers: $1 billion a day in spending, with more than 3,000 deaths. (Continued from yesterday’s report)
(Sources: Al Jazeera / Fortune / CNN / The Washington Post / Military.com / EIA / IAEA)
Also worth knowing ↓
DeepSeek has experienced its longest downtime since going live, impacting 355 million users for 7 hours. China’s most popular AI chatbot has suffered its most severe service disruption since the R1 release in January 2025. No cause of the outage has been announced. (Sources: Bloomberg / Reuters)
Dell has built up a $25 billion AI infrastructure business from scratch within two years. The “outdated PC maker” whose stock price fell by one-third in 2022 has set a record total revenue of $113.5 billion in 2025, and is guiding Wall Street expectations for AI server sales next year to reach $50 billion. The sellers of “water for AI infrastructure” aren’t just Nvidia. (Source: Fortune)
Huantian Robotics’ first day on the Hong Kong stock exchange saw a gain of 8.24%, with the public offering oversubscribed by more than 5,000 times. It debuted on the exchange with an issue price of 17 HKD and a market value of 9 billion HKD, backed by nearly $100 million in cornerstone investment from entities including Hillhouse, GF Fund, and Morgan Stanley. Embodied intelligence capital is heating up as it spills over from the primary market into the secondary market. (Source: 36Kr)
The Ethereum Foundation has staked $42 million worth of ETH in a one-off action. On-chain data shows this is the largest single staking operation by the Foundation to date. Previously, the Foundation had long not participated in staking—signals that its strategy has shifted are worth paying attention to. (Sources: CoinDesk / The Block)
Chinese cloud providers achieved large-scale profitability for the first time, as AI demand reversed the industry’s losses. Tencent Cloud became profitable for the first time in 2025, and Kingsoft Cloud turned to positive adjusted profits for two consecutive quarters. In the AI era, cloud providers’ pricing power is increasing, and the era of price wars may be coming to an end. (Sources: 36Kr / Shanghai Securities News)
Click to learn about Lüdong BlockBeats’ job openings
Welcome to join Lüdong BlockBeats’ official community:
Telegram subscription group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram discussion group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Twitter official account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
