Scottish Mortgage stock: SpaceX presents a risk, but Anthropic offers relief

Scottish Mortgage Trust share price jumped by over 1% on Friday, paring back some of the losses made earlier that week as investors cheered the SpaceX IPO, which marked a major milestone for the fund. It jumped to a high of 1,497p before paring back the gains to close at 1,450p. SMT stock now faces a major headwind, but the upcoming Anthropic IPO may offer a reprief.

Scottish Mortgage stock faces a major SpaceX risk

The SMT stock has embarked on a strong rally earlier this year as investors cheered the growing valuation of SpaceX, its biggest investment. SpaceX launched its IPO on Friday, raising $75 billion and attaining a $2.1 trillion valuation. 

This means that Scottish Mortgage has a substantial return as it invested in the company when it was valued at less than $100 billion. It invested 315 million pounds in the company in 2018, a figure that has now surged.

Still, the trust faces a major risk based on how companies behave when they go public. Data shows that over 90% of all companies that went public since January 2025 made a similar pattern. They surged initially amid the IPO hype and then retreated sharply after that.

There are several good examples of this, including Figma, Circle, and Medline. Figma stock price jumped from $33 to $142, before crashing to below $20 today. Circle jumped to $300 and then crashed to $49 a few months later. Medline rose to $50 and then tumbled to $36 today.

Therefore, there is a likelihood that the SPCX stock will retreat in the coming days as investors book profits and valuation concerns remain. If this happens, the value of Scottish Mortgage’s investment will drop substantially.

Some key companies in Scottish Mortgage’s portfolio have lost momentum this year. Meta Platforms has sunk by 30% from its highest point last year, while Amazon has dropped by 14% from the YTD high.

Anthropic IPO to offset the SPCX stock retreat

Still, on the positive side, the SMT share price will receive a reprieve because of its stake in Anthropic, the creator of Claude. Bailie Gifford, which runs SMT, made its first investment in Anthropic in 2021 and has steadily grown its position. Anthropic now accounts for about 2.7% of its holdings.

The fund’s return has been strong as Anthropic recently raised capital at a $900 billion valuation. This fundraising makes it the fastest-growing company to cross that valuation.

Anthropic recently filed its IPO papers, with traders anticipating that it will receive a $1.5 trillion valuation after going public later this year. 

The company’s other potential catalysts are its investments in Stripe and Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok. Stripe has become a major player in the finance industry, where it is used by some of the biggest companies in the world like OpenAI, Amazon, Nvidia, Ford, Coinbase, and Google.

It processes transactions worth trillions of dollars a year, with its valuation soaring to over $150 billion. After remaining private for years, Stripe will likely go public in the near future.

ByteDance will also likely go public, a move that will see it attract hundreds of billions of dollars in value. 

SMT stock chart analysis

Scottish Mortgage share price chart | Source: TradingView

The daily chart shows that the Scottish Mortgage share price has slipped in the past few days. It retreated from a high of 1,565p earlier this month to a low of 1,395p. It then rebounded to the current 1,450p. 

The stock has formed a doji candlestick pattern, pointing to a reversal as the SpaceX IPO hype starts to fade. If this happens, the stock will drop to about 1,300p before resuming the uptrend.