Peter Singlehurst

Well, SpaceX will begin trading on NASDAQ later today under the ticker SPCX.

However, the company will not be eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 for at least a year.

It would also need to meet the index's requirements for profitability and 10% public share ownership.

Currently, less than 5% of SpaceX's shares are available for public trading.

And the company posted a loss of nearly $4.2 billion in the first quarter.

Peter Singlehurst heads the private companies team at Bailey Gifford.

Peter Singlehurst speaking there with a small number of firms set to net tens of billions of dollars in return from the listing in one of the most significant windfalls for the venture capital industry.

SpaceX is the first of three major IPOs expected to capitalise on investors' appetite for artificial intelligence.

Anthropic and OpenAI are also expected to go public this year.

They could each seek valuations of more than a trillion dollars.

Fascinating story, isn't it?

I mean, current and former employees of SpaceX also in line for millions.

So, two of the early investors like Founders Fund and Anderson Horowitz.

So, SpaceX, a hugely important story.

But let's think about what's happening in the UK, though.

The economy contracted for the first time in eight months in April in an early sign of the impact from the Iran war.

GDP declined by 0.1% following gains in the previous two months.

Services were down by 0.2%.

The figure set the stage for a tepid second quarter as businesses and consumers grapple with the higher energy costs and borrowing rates triggered by the events in the Middle East.

And we've had a