While the bloom is off the rose on big spring and summer initial public offerings, such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s (ticker: SPCX) June 12 debut, there’s more action on the IPO front as summer 2026 winds down.
“We think the 2026 IPO market has been healthy, but much of the activity has come from a relatively small number of very large offerings,” says Willy Lee, principal at Neostellar Capital Corp. (NSLR), a publicly traded venture capital fund with investments in OpenAI, Canva and TensorWave, among other companies.
Among those public debuts, and perhaps lost in the news shuffle, was Cerebras Systems Inc. (CBRS), which raked in $5.6 billion in its spring IPO.
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Per Renaissance Capital’s IPO Market Review, the second quarter produced 48 U.S. IPOs that raised approximately $105 billion. Thanks to SpaceX, it was the strongest quarter for IPO proceeds on record. “Even excluding SpaceX, it would still have been the strongest quarter since 2021,” Lee notes.
As Labor Day looms and investors return from the beach ready to roll, Lee views the U.S. IPO market as robust, but only to a point.
“The market is open, but companies generally need more scale, stronger financials and a clearer leadership position before investors are willing to support an IPO,” he says. “This means many strong companies will continue to spend several additional years in the private market. That longer window is where we see an opportunity to invest in companies that are approaching public-market scale but are not yet ready (or under pressure) to go public.”
Other market experts say they’re seeing an influx of savvy IPO investors who’ve done their homework and are more choosy about which new stocks to buy.
“2026 is an interesting IPO market because the headline activity looks strong, but underneath that, the market is still quite selective,” says Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner at Fusion Fund.
From a venture perspective, Zhang views that investor selectivity is healthy. “Public investors are becoming much more disciplined about differentiating companies based not only on growth, but also on the quality and profitability of that growth,” she notes.
That’s not always been the case in the IPO market. For many years, particularly when capital was inexpensive, companies could command premium valuations primarily by demonstrating very high growth rates. “That equation has changed,” Zhang says. “Today, public investors want to understand gross margins, operating leverage, free cash flow and, for companies that are not yet profitable, whether there is a credible and measurable path to profitability.”
This trend is particularly important for vetting firms in AI, where some companies are generating extraordinary revenue growth but also require enormous ongoing investment in compute, infrastructure and talent. “Investors need to look beyond the top line and ask: How much does it cost to generate each incremental dollar of revenue?” Zhang says. “Do margins improve as the company scales? And ultimately, can revenue growth translate into sustainable earnings and cash flow?”
In a current IPO market with more questions than answers, and more selective investors asking those questions, what new, front-burner IPOs make sense now? First, a recap of recent notable IPOs, then a list of upcoming candidates:
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX)
SpaceX is two-and-a-half months removed from its public trading debut, but Wall Street can’t stop talking about one of the more polarizing new IPOs that’s launched into orbit in recent years. That’s likely because SPCX illustrates the volatility of the current IPO market, starting at a wildly high $1.77 trillion valuation. Its market capitalization had expanded to about $1.86 trillion as of late August, despite volatile trading.
Founded in 2002 to curb the costs of space launches and pave the way to a self-sustaining colony on Mars, the company set an IPO price of $135 per share and opened trading at $150 on the Nasdaq on June 12. Performance has been anything but stellar: It recently traded around 36% below its post-IPO peak in late July, but it has bounced back in the past month.
Market experts point out that a newly traded stock can be repeatedly upsized on demand and still open flat. “That gap, between allocation demand and aftermarket support, is the single most useful signal in this market,” says Chan Ahn, founder of Tessera Labs and a former institutional finance specialist at Goldman Sachs. “Demand for an allocation is not the same thing as demand for the stock.”
SpaceX is a good lesson on scale. “It priced at $135 for roughly $75 billion, the largest IPO on record, and skipped the book-building range entirely, going straight to a fixed price, which is what you do when demand is so far ahead of supply that the range becomes a formality,” Ahn says.
Reported demand exceeded $250 billion against the $75 billion the company sought, and events turned volatile fast. “It opened at $150, closed its first session near $161, peaked at $225.64 intraday on June 16, and was back around $153 by late June, giving up roughly a third of its value in under two weeks,” Ahn explains.
Those dark days are over for now, and things are looking up for SpaceX. The company is racking up big contracts in Washington, D.C., mainly to deliver military satellites for Uncle Sam. The Trump administration is also giving SpaceX a pass on certain wireless networking regulations, while also sidestepping critics of rocket launches’ impact on ecosystems.
Analysts remain bullish on the stock, with 19 of 25 market experts issuing a “buy” call with a consensus price target of $237. That suggests about 75% upside for SPCX shares currently.
Quantinuum Inc. (QNT)
This Broomfield, Colorado-based company caught attention on June 4 as the quantum computing industry’s first traditional initial public offering. The IPO popped, sending shares up 28% on its first trading day, yet dropped precipitously in late July and early August. However, they’ve risen again on solid Q2 performance and a new strategic partnership with Oracle Corp. (ORCL).
Quantinuum represents a different and intriguing new category for investors. “Quantum is much earlier in commercialization, so I would focus less on headline technology milestones and more on whether those milestones are translating into repeatable commercial use cases,” Zhang says. “Public markets can finance long-duration innovation, but eventually there has to be a bridge between scientific progress and economic value.”
Quantinuum is also a good example of a high-flying tech IPO that disappointed excited investors, like SpaceX. “These two examples highlight how themes related to powerful technologies can generate substantial levels of demand,” says Andrew Bahlmann, co-founder of Deal Leaders International, a boutique mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. However, these same examples illustrate why investors should evaluate a stock’s attractiveness relative to its entry price, not just the company. “For example, Quantinuum’s upsized offering indicates strong interest in quantum computing, while the post-listing volatility experienced by SpaceX demonstrates the risk associated with investing in excitement without sufficient valuation discipline,” Bahlmann adds.
Street analysts still heavily favor the stock, with 11 of 12 professional market trackers issuing a “buy” call on QNT in late August, with a consensus average price target of $92 per share, indicating 77% potential upside from its recent price of $52, according to rating tables site TipRanks.
OpenAI
OpenAI has set its sights on a 2027 IPO. Company executive Sarah Friar laid out a plan in an Aug. 19 meeting with employees, as reported by CNBC.
In the all-hands meeting, Friar reportedly told staffers that OpenAI will be a public company in 2027, or sooner if the San Francisco firm’s business continues to flourish. That shorter IPO scenario could rely on revenue direction, which is trending upward for OpenAI right now. According to the reports on Friar’s comments, internal company numbers show a 35% quarter-to-date revenue run rate, and enterprise revenue is up 50%. OpenAI announced just last week that Codex and ChatGPT Work have passed 20 million active users.
OpenAI raised $122 billion in a March funding round, so it has flexibility. It confidentially submitted its draft S-1 paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, marking the first formal step toward an IPO. However, the company may be delaying its public debut until 2027 to reach a valuation of $1 trillion or more. Recently, OpenAI had an estimated $852 billion valuation.
Polymarket traders have basically given up on a near-term OpenAI public offering, with only 16% anticipating an IPO by Dec. 31, 2026.
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Anthropic
Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI model, has emerged as a surprise heavyweight out of the artificial intelligence boom. The five-year-old San Francisco-based company’s latest funding round created an approximately $965 billion valuation. Anthropic could wind up raising $100 billion in a powerhouse IPO, aiming for a higher valuation of $2 trillion that could outpace even SpaceX.
“Anthropic is probably one of the most interesting potential upcoming technology IPOs,” Zhang says. “I’ve always been particularly bullish on enterprise AI, and I think Anthropic has established a very strong position there.”
Yet Zhang believes an Anthropic IPO would also force the public market to answer a much bigger question for the AI industry: How should investors value extraordinary revenue growth when producing that revenue still requires enormous and continuously growing infrastructure investment? “For frontier AI companies, the relationship between revenue growth, inference economics and capital intensity will eventually matter as much as model performance,” Zhang notes.
The company confidentially filed its draft registration statement for an IPO with the SEC on June 1. Since then, investment banks leading the deal have started scheduling investor meetings, representing a green light for the highly anticipated public debut, which could launch as early as October.
Market conditions will likely play an important role in determining timing on a big IPO from the AI titans, particularly if tech-sector volatility persists. “That dynamic extends beyond AI, as many highly anticipated IPO candidates remain technology-oriented and may grow skittish if a sustained sell-off takes shape,” Marta Norton, chief investment strategist at Empower, said in a late-July research note. “More broadly, the push by leading private AI companies toward the public markets underscores the enormous capital requirements associated with developing and deploying advanced AI models.”
Anduril Industries
With the U.S.-Iran military conflict seemingly in a holding pattern, the U.S. Department of Defense still expects to spend $856 billion or more this year, and defense tech company Anduril Industries’ expected 2026 IPO could capitalize on the opportunity.
Founded in 2017, Costa Mesa, California-based Anduril recently posted a $61 billion post-money valuation after a $5 billion Series H funding round that ended this spring. Market analysts say that secondary market pricing on trading platforms like the Nasdaq Private Market could push Anduril’s valuation even higher, with $100 billion a more likely target. If the IPO lands at a triple-digit valuation, Anduril would become the largest private defense firm on Earth.
Anduril founder and CEO Palmer Luckey has indicated a preference for an IPO, noting in 2025 that Anduril is “definitely going to be a publicly traded company.” Potential investors may have some clarity in the second half of 2026. With $2.2 billion in 2025 revenues representing roughly 120% growth from 2024, and a projected $4.3 billion in 2026 revenues, Anduril should be a big hit when it finally does go public.
Polymarket traders already back that sentiment, with 86% of platform bettors expecting a $110 billion valuation for Anduril by the end of 2026.
Databricks
It’s good news-bad news for Databricks public investors, as the company just capped a $5 billion funding round at a $190 billion valuation but also continued to stall on a proposed IPO, likely pushing the deal into 2027.
Noting that “demand is crazy” right now, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Aug. 13 that “what’s happening basically is everybody’s using these agents, AI agents.” Databricks, a data analytics software business that operates in the AI agent realm, has long been considered to be IPO-ready, yet company management is prioritizing private markets to avoid the volatility and disclosure requirements of a public listing in the current AI market.
“Databricks’ CEO said publicly in June that this was a poor year to list,” Ahn says. “A private company with access to secondary liquidity and continuation capital has no forcing function to go public. That optionality is why the pipeline looks thinner than the fundamentals suggest it should.”
Other market watchers say any big-name AI IPO candidate will draw a lot of attention, and Databricks is no different. “Databricks is the name I would be watching most closely, since it’s one of the most important private AI infrastructure companies,” says Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at tech analysis firm Futurum Equities. “The company is well positioned, sitting at the center of the enterprise data layer, which is where companies have to organize, govern and activate their data before AI can become useful in production.”
Shein
Four years in the making, Shein, the Singapore-based online fashion retailer, looks set to go public on Sept. 1 in Hong Kong, seeking to raise $1.8 billion with a valuation of about $27 billion. The Shein IPO timeline stretches back to January 2022, when the company announced its intent to go the IPO route in the U.S., with founder Chris Xu weighing U.S. citizenship, in part to evade notoriously strict Chinese rules on offshore IPOs.
Fast forward to January 2025, when Shein signed off on an IPO deal opening in London with a proposed $50 billion valuation. Citing tougher U.S. commercial mandates on offshore retailers, Shein backed off again, shifting its vision and IPO to Hong Kong, which the Chinese government finally approved in July 2026.
Where does Shein go from here? The low-cost retail giant should fare better overall in Hong Kong than it would in London, where regulatory scrutiny is widely viewed as more stringent. However, ongoing tariff troubles between the U.S. and China could make American IPO investment dollars a tough sell.
Tips for New IPO Investors
1. Take your time and proceed with caution.
If you’re new to the IPO market and are already treading cautiously, seasoned investors say that’s exactly what you should be doing, as prudence pays off in the IPO market.
“For new investors considering investing in an initial public offering or merger, don’t mistake a strong debut for a strong investment,” Bahlmann says. “Take the time to read the prospectus, examine how the company intends to utilize its cash resources, understand the level of customer concentration within the company, calculate any potential dilution associated with future offerings of equity securities, review the company’s governance structure and analyze the path to profitability.”
2. Look at the IPO as an off-ramp for private investors.
Market experts also advise new investors to start viewing an IPO not as an entry point, but as an exit event. “It’s the moment the people who owned the compounding get their liquidity,” Ahn explains. “SpaceX went from a $27 million founding valuation in 2002 to $1.77 trillion at its IPO listing, and essentially all of that happened in private. What’s on offer at the IPO is what’s left.”
3. Allocation is rationed, and retail is last in the queue.
SpaceX earmarked 30% of its float for retail, triple the usual mega-cap norm. “Even so, retail orders still exceeded $100 billion against a $75 billion total raise,” Ahn says. “A generous allocation percentage doesn’t help when demand is that concentrated.”
4. The first-day pop isn’t the return.
Ahn advises looking at recent and sizable IPOs like Quantinuum, which closed flat, and SpaceX, which gave back most of its gain within two weeks. “A Reuters analysis of the 50 most-valued IPOs of the past five years found investors would have done better in an S&P 500 index fund about three-quarters of the time,” he says.
5. The lock-up calendar is the real price-discovery date.
Insiders are typically restricted from selling for 180 days, and until that expires, the float is artificially small, and the price reflects scarcity as much as value. “For the June cohort, that lands in December,” Ahn adds. “None of this is an argument against participating. It’s an argument for knowing which side of the transaction you’re on.”
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7 Best Recent and Upcoming IPOs in 2026 originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 08/25/26: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
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