About Robert Greifeld
Robert Greifeld, former Nasdaq chairman and CEO, appeared on CNBC in May and June 2026 to discuss the SpaceX IPO and broader market conditions. He described the SpaceX IPO as "the largest IPO ever" and said Nasdaq was "uniquely able to handle an IPO this size." Greifeld stated that the IPO window is open, citing SpaceX as an example, and said he would "definitely bet" that Anthropic and OpenAI would also list on Nasdaq. He characterized SpaceX stock as trading "not on fundamentals" but "on the aspiration of what's possible with the human spirit."
Greifeld also addressed index inclusion rules for large IPOs. He said that if he were in charge in 2006 and a company with a $75 billion raise, 24 years of operation, and over 10,000 investors sought index inclusion, "we'd be wrong not to get this company in the index." He argued that the scale of such companies provides "adequate float" to support public markets. Regarding price discovery, Greifeld said that index inclusion would have a "marginal" impact on price and that the "beauty of the public market is all buyers and sellers come together to discover price." He suggested that the quality of the market could be judged by spread and liquidity, and that retail investors would be "better served" by the increased information available in public markets.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Robert Greifeld's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Host0:07
Company behind Louisville Slugger. Joining us, Bob Greifeld. Welcome back, nice to see you.
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Robert Greifeld0:15
Good to be back.
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Host0:16
What do we make of this? This was supposed to be a big comeback year. Markets hitting record high after record high. There's excitement about the Fed cutting rates, having a soft landing, or not even a landing right now. Why so sluggish on IPOs?
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Robert Greifeld0:30
Well, I don't believe we'll stay that way. I think Nasdaq has done a great job of coming up with this pulse index, which I've had time to study. If you think about it from a common sense point of view, a factor that matters is the market last year was up dramatically. The second factor is just the interest rates are going to come down this year, which we'll talk about later. And the third factor is investor sentiment, which is actually increasing. So, if you take those three factors, that leads to a good score. And it leads to higher IPO activity. We've seen the highest score since 2021. I predict a recovering market for IPOs in 2024. Obviously, the stronger the company that leads the IPO, you know, onslaught, the better. I always think back to how Google single-handedly changed the sentiment of IPOs back in the day.
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Host1:27
While the market conditions might be right, Bob, the performance of recent IPOs is not particularly inspiring, with a lot of those that I mentioned. I mean, it's not like they got out of the gate and went up.
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Robert Greifeld1:41
Well, I focus a lot on fintech. Fintech technology companies. What's interesting, I think it's very important, is all fintech IPOs since 2019, the vast majority are now trading above their IPO price for the very first time. What you're expressing has been very true in certainly the fintech world. You have an IPO, it trades below the IPO price. It certainly will dampen the enthusiasm for subsequent companies to go public. That's not the case in '24. The vast majority of these fintech companies are now above the IPO price, meaning early stage investors who came in are now in the black. They might have underperformed the overall index, but being in the black is a positive feeling. I think that's one of the catalysts you'll see, which will help the IPO market going forward.
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Host2:32
Any debate, Bob, about which part of the globe is the most attractive in which to list? Is the U.S. far and ahead number one?
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Robert Greifeld2:40
Far and ahead, right? Far and ahead number one. It is the deepest, most liquid capital market. It's also the market with the most informed investors who really want to understand the investment story. There's no close second like there was ten years ago. It is the U.S. market. Nasdaq has done a phenomenal job with that effort.
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Host3:02
I do wonder about, you know, the so-called valuation overhang where these companies, these private companies got such high private market valuations in 2020, 2021, 2022, that the public market is just not going to give them... Whether that makes companies apprehensive or even hard to afford going public.
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Robert Greifeld3:26
I think that's one of the reasons we had a great stall. You had a Mexican standoff in regard to valuation. In 2023 you saw a large number of companies do valuations, even while doing well. I think we've seen a general... as I watch in '23, we saw a converge.
