North Carolina Treasurer Passes on SpaceX IPO, Backs OpenAI and Anthropic
North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner, who oversees roughly $200 billion in pension assets, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the state passed on buying directly into SpaceX's IPO because its roughly $1.77 trillion valuation is "fully priced," even as the fund's existing AI bets have outperformed sharply. SpaceX plans to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 each this week, raising about $75 billion. Briner said North Carolina put $40 million into OpenAI and $250 million into Anthropic earlier this year, and that the Anthropic stake alone is now worth more than $600 million. The state still expects to gain SpaceX exposure passively through its public index-fund holdings once shares begin trading, rather than through a direct pre-IPO stake.
North Carolina's pension fund is running a live comparison of how institutional capital is pricing the AI boom: rather than buying into the most hyped IPO of the year, it doubled down early on private AI-platform stakes that have already produced sharply outsized paper gains, an early data point for how allocators may value AI-native companies against asset-heavy tech IPOs.
What happened
North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the state's roughly $200 billion pension fund is not buying directly into SpaceX's IPO because the company's valuation, near $1.75 trillion to $1.8 trillion, is "fully priced." SpaceX planned to price the IPO this week and begin trading shortly after, selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each to raise about $75 billion, according to CNBC and Investing.com.
Financial context
Briner's fund invested about $40 million in OpenAI and $250 million in Anthropic earlier this year; he told CNBC the Anthropic stake alone is now worth more than $600 million, a roughly 140% gain in months. "We saw an opportunity in Anthropic which we thought was completely mispriced earlier this year," Briner said, per Investing.com's account of his CNBC remarks. On SpaceX, Briner said the fund still expects to gain exposure passively: "We will ultimately participate in SpaceX through our index positions in our public equity, but we don't have any on the private side."
For practitioners
The episode is a live comparison of two ways large allocators are getting AI exposure: concentrated private bets on AI model companies versus a mega-cap pre-IPO stake in AI-adjacent infrastructure. Briner's stated bar, a "high single digit, predictable rate of return," is a useful benchmark for how at least one major public pension is discounting frontier valuations even as it stays bullish on AI model companies specifically.
What to watch
- •SpaceX's IPO pricing and first-day trading performance once it lists, as a signal of how public markets value the same assets the pension fund judged "fully priced."
- •Whether other public pension funds voice similar valuation discipline on pre-IPO mega-deals.
- •Further disclosures on North Carolina's Anthropic and OpenAI position sizes and any additional AI allocations.
- •Secondary-market pricing for Anthropic and OpenAI stakes, which will show whether the fund's marked gains hold up.
Editorial analysis
Briner's numbers show how quickly private AI valuations are moving relative to even a marquee public listing: North Carolina's $250 million Anthropic commitment from earlier this year is already marked above $600 million, a faster paper return than the pension fund is willing to underwrite on SpaceX at current levels. That gap, rather than any single figure, is the real story for allocators weighing AI-platform bets against infrastructure-heavy tech IPOs.
Key Points
- 1North Carolina's pension fund declined a direct SpaceX IPO stake, judging its roughly $1.77 trillion valuation too rich for the fund's return targets.
- 2The fund's $250 million Anthropic commitment from earlier this year is already marked above $600 million, a roughly 140% paper gain in months.
- 3The contrast shows one major public pension applying valuation discipline to a mega-cap IPO while staying bullish on concentrated private AI-platform bets.
Scoring Rationale
A major US public pension fund's on-record valuation judgment against a marquee IPO, paired with concrete, verified figures on its AI-platform stakes, offers a real signal on institutional AI investment discipline; notable for allocators and AI-market watchers but a single-fund data point rather than a market-wide shift.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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