The IPO Comeback: Why Tech Giants Are Finally Going Public | All-In Liquidity IPO Panel

The panel brought two strands together: the IPO experience and the technological frontiers in AI silicon and space-based compute. Speakers included Will Marshall (Planet Labs) and Andrew Feldman (Cerebrus/Cerebras), plus investors and hosts who reflected on liquidity and timing. The conversation opened with practical notes about going public: Feldman emphasized that, aside from more cash and new stakeholders, day‑to‑day execution largely stays the same and the IPO process itself is cumbersome. An investor on the panel (Brad Gersner) walked through Cerebrus’s recent public debut—pricing at $185, opening near $320 and trading around $230 shortly afterward—while noting the company had navigated political/ownership scrutiny on the way to market. The room also contrasted different public-market trajectories: Planet’s stock climbed roughly 10x over a year (from about $5 to $50), illustrating how significant appreciation can occur after listing if investors hold through.

The technical half pivoted to why both space and silicon are entering new, intersecting phases. Marshall laid out Planet’s product and market: ~200 daily-imaging satellites, wide utility across agriculture, energy, civil gov’t and a revenue base now dominated (~60%) by security and government contracts. He argued that falling launch costs and satellite miniaturization are catalyzing an Earth-data economy ($75–100B near-term) and that space compute will become economical once launch costs reach roughly $200–$300/kg—on the projection that Starship-like vehicles could get costs there in 2–3 years. Planet is already testing GPUs in orbit and planning TPU experiments with Google. Feldman described a competing trend in silicon: domain-specific architectures that minimize data movement by putting high-speed memory next to compute on a very large die, yielding 15–18x faster inference for major LLM workloads versus GPUs. The two agreed AI plus real‑time Earth data will unlock “planetary intelligence,” but differed on timing: Marshall was bullish on near-term orbital compute experiments and cost inflection, while Feldman cautioned that the final engineering thresholds (the hardest last 10%) make wide deployment a longer slog and that terrestrial compute will remain dominant for the foreseeable future. The panel closed on an investor note: earlier public listings and structured lockups (graded 'dribble' releases tied to performance) can broaden participation and still leave ample upside for long-term holders.