Which Of 10 Famous IPOs Made Buyers Rich?
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Every few years a company goes public that everyone has an opinion about. The opinions are about the business. The returns, it turns out, depend at least as much on one boring number: how much buyers paid for each dollar of revenue on day one.
Here is the scorecard.
| IPO | Value at IPO | Price ÷ trailing revenue | Worst drop after IPO | Value today vs IPO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon, May 1997 | $0.43B | 27x | −94% (1999–2001) | about 6,000x |
| Google, Aug 2004 | $23B | 16x | −65% (2007–08) | about 150x |
| Facebook, May 2012 | $104B | 28x | −54% in four months; −77% (2021–22) | about 15x |
| Alibaba, Sep 2014 | $168B | 20x | −80% (2020–22) | under 1.5x |
| Saudi Aramco, Dec 2019 | $1.7T | 5x | over −33% (AFP) | about 1x (press) |
| Uber, May 2019 | $82B | 7x | −68% (to Mar 2020) | under 2x |
| Rivian, Nov 2021 | $66B | no revenue | about −95% | about 0.3x |
| Arm, Sep 2023 | $54B | 20x | about −54% | about 4x |
| SpaceX, Jun 2026 | $1.77T | 95x | update monthly | update monthly |
| Anthropic, 2026 | $1.5T–$2T (press estimates) | 76x–101x | pending | pending |
The big winners cost 16x to 28x revenue. SpaceX and Anthropic cost 76x to 101x.
Three patterns jump out. None of them is “the best business wins.”
How we built the table
Value at IPO = IPO price × shares outstanding, as reported at pricing. Price ÷ trailing revenue = value at IPO ÷ revenue in the last fiscal year before the IPO (Amazon 1996 $15.7M; Google 2003 $1.47B; Facebook 2011 $3.71B; Alibaba FY Mar 2014 about $8.5B; Aramco 2018 about $356B; Uber 2018 $11.3B; Arm FY Mar 2023 $2.68B; SpaceX 2025 $18.7B; Anthropic trailing 12 months $19.7B). Value today vs IPO compares company values, not share prices, so it ignores dilution and dividends. Worst drop is from a post-IPO peak to the next low. “Today” values are at the Oct 30, 2026 close.
Pattern One: Cheap Didn’t Mean Good
The cheapest IPOs on the list were Aramco at 5x revenue and Uber at 7x. Neither made IPO buyers rich. Aramco is a superb business that wasn’t growing; Uber was growing but losing money for years. A low price only helps when the business is about to get much bigger.
Pattern Two: The Winners Were Fast Growers At Normal Prices
Amazon, Google and Facebook were all growing very fast, and all went public at 16x to 28x revenue. That’s expensive for a normal company, but not for one about to grow tenfold. That combination, fast growth at a price that left room for it, is what produced the 15x, 150x and 6,000x.
Pattern Three: Every Winner Fell Hard First
This is the part people forget. Amazon fell 94%. Google fell about 65% in the financial crisis. Facebook halved within four months of its IPO, then fell 77% in 2021–22. Buying a great IPO was only half the job. Holding it through a drop that would have scared most people out was the other half.
That’s the real question for anyone excited about SpaceX or Anthropic: not whether the company wins, but whether you can hold it through a 50% to 90% fall without wrecking your plans. For families with $1 million or more, the answer depends on everything else you own. A Trefis partner firm can show you how much a drop like that would cost you.
Where SpaceX And Anthropic Fit
Both are growing fast. SpaceX’s revenue was $18.7 billion in 2025 and Starlink is most of it; Anthropic’s grew 14-fold in a year. But both arrived at prices three to six times what the past winners cost per dollar of revenue. On this scorecard, that puts them in new territory. For them to repeat Google’s path, their businesses have to grow far faster and for far longer than Google’s did. For the full Anthropic comparisons, see Anthropic vs Google and Anthropic vs Amazon.
Growth at a price that leaves room for it. That’s what the big IPO winners had in common, and every one of them still fell more than 50% along the way. SpaceX and Anthropic have the growth. The price is the open question.
What Would A 90% Drop Do To Your Plan?
Every winner on this list fell more than half before it paid off. If you have $1 million or more invested and some of it rides on a few hot names, get a free stress test of your portfolio from a Trefis partner firm: what you’d lose if it happened again.
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