SpaceX $75B IPO could squeeze 2026 listings
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- SpaceX is closing in on a $75 billion IPO that could rewrite record books, with Musk reportedly eyeing a June listing window for the Starlink operator
- Renaissance Capital's Matt Kennedy compared the anticipated deal to Facebook's 2012 IPO, warning IPO activity "may die down" in the weeks surrounding SpaceX's offering as media noise drowns out competing deals
- OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly aiming for debut offerings in the second half of 2026, with PitchBook estimating a combined raise of roughly $50 billion
- PitchBook's Kyle Stanford warned that SpaceX ($50-75B) plus OpenAI and Anthropic ($50B combined) would "roughly match the total raised by U.S. VC-backed company IPOs over the past decade"
- Cerity Partners' Michael Ashley Schulman said smaller IPO debuts may benefit from a "tag-along effect" in retail enthusiasm, even as bankers advise big clients to avoid competing directly with SpaceX
- 2026 IPO activity has been sluggish, with 35 IPOs priced so far this year — down 37.5% from the same period a year earlier, per Renaissance Capital data
- The broader IPO market is already contending with the war in Iran, spiking oil prices, private credit concerns, and AI-led disruption to legacy software firms, raising the bar for which deals break through
Why it matters: A single SpaceX listing, combined with OpenAI and Anthropic's expected debuts, could absorb capital equivalent to a full decade of U.S. VC-backed IPOs, potentially pushing an open IPO window into 2027. Even Musk's track record — Tesla raised $226 million in 2010 and is now worth over $1.3 trillion — may not be enough in what IPOX's Josef Schuster called today's "buyer's market," where strong candidates must price flexibly.
