By JUAN CARLOS ARANCIBIA

News that SpaceX could file for its initial public offering as early as this week focused fresh attention on the IPO market's three-year rebound. It looks as though 2026 could be the biggest bounce yet, as SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI and other major companies contemplate going public.

The three largest private companies in the IPO pipeline each top $350 billion in valuation. All three could become the largest initial public offering in history and smash a 12-year record.

Open AI Group, the parent of ChatGPT, had a valuation of about $730 billion based on its most recent funding round. SpaceX weighs in at more than $800 billion, and Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI tool, is at $380 billion.

By comparison, Alibaba (BABA), the largest previous IPO, had a valuation of about $230 billion when it went public on the NYSE in September 2014. The China-based internet titan raised a record $21.77 billion. That could soon be shattered.

A $380 billion valuation would place Anthropic among the 35 largest companies traded in the U.S., according to IBD MarketSurge data. Bloomberg has reported that SpaceX could be seeking a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion. That would also make it the first 10-figure IPO.

IPO candidates are not only getting more valuable, there are also more companies filing to go public. In a 2026 outlook, IPO analysis firm Renaissance Capital said the public pipeline is loaded with more than 190 companies. The firm expects at least 200 IPOs this year.

IPO Backlog

"This is a very large backlog. It is perhaps the largest we've had in at least two decades," said Angelo Bochanis, who analyzes pre-IPO activity for Renaissance Capital. "It is full of names that public investors have been clamoring for, for years."

Companies have had incentives to remain privately held, says Brianne Lynch, head of market insight at EquityZen, a private market investing platform. They've enjoyed access to abundant capital in the private market, and the volatility of the stock market was another reason.

"A lot of these companies have chosen to stay private and grow privately to avoid that daily mark to market and the scrutiny that comes with being a public company," she told IBD.

Analysts believe that falling interest rates, buzz around artificial intelligence and a three-year stock market uptrend are now convincing companies to go public.

Last year's IPOs performed well enough that investors gave a vote of confidence, Lynch added. "That showed certainly that there's pent-up demand for these late-stage tech companies."

The Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO) climbed 46% from the April market low to the end of 2025, outperforming the S&P 500 in that span. The IPO fund is down about 4% this year while the S&P is off about 3%.

Long Preparation For IPO

A longer incubation period means that many companies in the IPO pipeline have grown into mature, profitable companies with deep roots.

"These are companies that have sat on the sidelines for many years, building up the fundamentals, regularly trying to buy as much liquidity as they can, and are now at a point where they look very enticing to public investors," Bochanis told IBD. "And a lot of these companies are looking at 2026, seeing that the IPO market is on a pretty straight recovery trajectory over the past couple of years. ...(And they are) having very serious conversations about whether this year is finally the year to go public."

Lynch says that even as last year's IPO activity picked up, it didn't make much of a dent in the backlog of private unicorns — some that have stayed private for 10 years, 15 years or longer.

"You've currently got over $5.5 trillion in aggregate value sitting in over 1,300 of these unicorn companies," she told IBD. "Twenty years ago, these are companies that all would have been public already."

IPOs Are The Stock Market's New Blood

IPOs represent the new blood for the stock market, and the implications go far beyond the euphoria of a new listing.

"For the U.S. to keep its long-run competitive edge relative to other countries, the IPO window needs to stay open for America's major LLMs (large language models) or other AI-related private companies," DataTrek cofounder Jessica Rabe wrote in a Feb. 24 report. "That's the only way new disruptive companies can make it into U.S. indices to help drive their next leg of growth."

The IPO market dried up to 71 listings that raised a total of $7.7 billion in the 2022 bear market. In the three years that followed, the number of IPOs went up to 108, 143 and 202, according to Renaissance Capital. Proceeds climbed to $19.4 billion, $29.6 billion and $44 billion over those same three years.

That's still below the feverish 2021 IPO market, which saw nearly 400 companies go public in offerings raising a combined $142.4 billion.

But many investors and analysts sense that the largest AI companies and SpaceX are finally ready to take the plunge into the public equity market.

SpaceX is likely the first to take the plunge. The company could file within a matter of days, aiming for a June IPO, The Information reported Tuesday. It could raise a record $75 billion or more.

While it's difficult to pinpoint an IPO date, OpenAI has reached a business scale where going public makes sense, says Evan Schlossman, a principal at SuRo Capital (SSSS), an investment fund that has a stake in the ChatGPT provider.

Beating Lofty Expectations

At OpenAI and other AI companies, demand is beating even lofty expectations, judging from hyperscalers' capital spending plans.

"If you look at the growth and demand that's expected, that translates into pretty significant capital that will be required to fund some of these initiatives and projects," Schlossman said. "(OpenAI CEO Sam) Altman has been vocal about that."

(IBD parent company News Corp (NWS) has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.)

While private capital can keep a company running for years, executives eventually find that it's easier to find capital in the public market, Schlossman said. Being a publicly owned company opens up more avenues of funding, and the cost of capital typically declines for public firms.

Willy Lee, another principal at SuRo Capital, says the IPO pipeline has grown as the AI business became better understood and companies became more adept at using AI levers. With businesses now producing consistent growth, companies are in a better position to become publicly traded.

For many companies, AI has made it possible for customers to gain greater access to their products. That's helped continue or even expand their growth, says Lee. That's the narrative of many companies ready to go public this year: fast growers that enhance their business by adding AI layers.

IPO Pipeline Is Diverse

Analysts say they are pleased with the diversity of the IPO pipeline, too. Technology accounts for just 15% of this year's IPOs. Industrials make up 27%, health care 21%, and financials 12%, according to Renaissance Capital. While the number of initial offerings is down 26.7% vs. the year-ago period, the amount raised so far is 40.7% higher.

In its 2026 outlook, Renaissance expects disruptive tech to continue to be a theme. "More crypto and fintech names have indicated plans to list," including U.K.-based neobank Revolut and crypto exchange Kraken, the firm noted. "In the broader tech sphere, we're watching design tool provider and Figma peer Canva, corporate expense software firm Ramp and enterprise security company Proofpoint."

The arrival of SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic into the public market would also mean any of those would automatically become one of the largest stocks by market capitalization. Even Anthropic, with a smaller valuation than other big companies on deck, would be among the 25 biggest stocks in the U.S. stock market.

SpaceX A Top-10 Stock?

If SpaceX hits a $1 trillion valuation, as some expect, it would make it a top-10 stock and rival the Magnificent Seven for supremacy.

"The 10 biggest companies in the S&P 500 make up almost 40% of the index, and if Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX are added later this year, the concentration could approach 50%," Torsten Slok, chief economist of asset manager Apollo Global Management, commented on March 14. "The bottom line is that the S&P 500 basically doesn't offer much diversification anymore."

But even with elephant-size tech listings, the IPO pipeline wouldn't necessarily be dominated by that sector.

"We're seeing a really diverse IPO pipeline, featuring a wealth of companies in spaces outside of tech," Renaissance's Bochanis said. "There are dozens of sizable names in the consumer, financials, health care and industrials spaces that could go public this year or next."

A large, successful tech IPO would demonstrate an appetite in the public market for high-quality IPOs, he added.

Many 2026 IPOs Struggle

Some of the largest offerings this year are trading below IPO prices as the Iran conflict drags on the broad stock market.

Construction equipment renter EquipmentShare.com (EQPT) has fallen five straight weeks and is below its 24.50 IPO price. Forgent Power Solutions (FPS), at about 30.40, is still above its 27 IPO price but it had been as high as 37.53.

Satellite maker York Space Systems (YSS) jumped as high as 38.47 the day it went public at 34 a share. It's now trading around 23. Once Upon A Farm (OFRM) is struggling. It's below its 18 initial price, after falling four weeks in a row.

PicS (PICS) is trading around 11, well below its 19 IPO price.

But Japan-based payment app PayPay (PAYP) is off to a roaring start. It went public at 16 a share on March 12 and closed its first day at 18.16, despite that the offering came in below the expected range of 17 to 20. On Wednesday, shares were above 24.

When Will Unicorns Launch IPOs?

After the SpaceX report, 95% of wagers on Polymarket are on SpaceX going public by the end of 2026. Some 27% of traders are betting Anthropic will have an IPO by Dec. 31, and 36% for OpenAI.

OpenAI hired a new chief accounting officer and a new head of investor relations. Those are positions essential to make a company IPO-ready, EquityZen's Lynch said.

On Feb. 2, SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed that the rocket company merged with his artificial intelligence startup, xAI. The combination added to speculation of an IPO this year. Some believe Musk could also combine Tesla (TSLA) with his space and AI companies.

Brett Winton, chief futurist at ARK Invest, told IBD that SpaceX executives have been auditioning bankers, and an IPO is possible this summer.

Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments, a venture capital firm invested in SpaceX, says it could take until the fourth quarter for SpaceX to launch its IPO. Could it reach a $1.5 trillion valuation as many believe?

The Elon Musk Factor

"Everything about the company is forward-looking. And so for that, it's gonna command a very, very high multiple," he said. Plus, SpaceX has the aura of its founder — what Parmar calls the Elon Musk factor.

"This isn't a serial entrepreneur who's got like four failures and four successes. ... He's got the magic touch. And so that's inherently going to be baked into the valuation," he added. "He's got such a loyal, rabid shareholder base that it'll get the first opportunity to finally buy into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, (that) being SpaceX."

Joseph Alagna, founding partner of Buttonwood Funds, which has a stake in SpaceX and xAI, believes the combination of the two Musk companies makes sense from the standpoint of raising capital. "This could be the biggest public offering of all time — raising more in one offering than most IPO markets do in an entire year," Alagna said.

Unicorns' Financials Vary

Aside from insiders, investors don't have access to unicorns' financials. Once they file for an IPO, more details will become public in their prospectuses. For now, investors can only piece together a financial picture. It's not all so bright.

Anthropic, whose Claude chatbot helps with business tasks, expects to break even for the first time in 2028, The Wall Street Journal reported. OpenAI forecasts an operating loss of $74 billion in 2028, roughly three-fourths of total revenue, according to documents the Journal reviewed. OpenAI also expects to burn through roughly 14 times as much cash as Anthropic before turning a profit in 2030.

Deutsche Bank estimates that OpenAI's total losses before turning a profit would be the largest ever, dwarfing Uber (UBER), Tesla (TSLA) and others.

In a document related to a financing round, OpenAI said Microsoft (MSFT) accounts for "a substantial portion of our financing and compute." The document, reported by CNBC, indicates OpenAI's reliance on Microsoft is a potential risk.

Anthropic had $982.1 million in sales in 2024, up 575% from $145.6 million in 2023, FactSet data shows.

SpaceX has been profitable for many years based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. But net income remains negative, including -$1.22 billion in 2024, according to FactSet. Sales surged from $1.552 billion in 2020 to $2.259 billion, $4.542 billion, $8.444 billion and $13.874 billion over the next four years.

Performance Of IPO Stocks

Investing in IPO stocks can be lucrative, but IPOs are a hit-or-miss market. Some of 2025's unicorns are now trading well below their peaks.

Venture Global (VG), SailPoint (SAIL), Klarna (KLAR), Figma (FIG), Bullish (BLSH), NIQ Global Intelligence (NIQ) and Beta Technologies (BETA) are below their IPO prices; that's seven of the 10 largest IPOs last year.

Buying on the first day of trading is often risky. The volatility that comes with a new issue and lack of trading history leave shares to investor whims. IBD recommends that investors wait for new issues to trade at least several days and form an initial consolidation. An IPO base — which can be as short as seven days — offers a safer way to trade new stocks.

A study of chart patterns of winning stocks conducted by IBD Senior Market Strategist Mike Webster found that the IPO base is the most successful, producing average gains of more than 14% in an eight-week period from their proper buy points. That's well above the average gain from other IBD-identified patterns such as the double bottom and cup with handle.

War And The IPO Market

Uncertainty over the Iran conflict hasn't spared the IPO market, where the first quarter is closing quietly. Some issuers have shored up offerings with discounted valuations and limited amounts of shares offered.

Yet, the most recent activity shows interest in selected areas. Abroad, IPO activity continued apace, with major deals in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Germany trading higher by as much as 34%.

"Clearly, there's still plenty of aftermarket demand for the right growth stories," Renaissance CEO Bill Smith said in a weekly analysis. "That partly explains why bankers are striking an optimistic tone for the summer IPO market, despite the fact that most 2026 IPOs are in the red. But for now, expect a relatively light deal calendar until volatility settles down."

IBD Senior Multimedia Editor Alexis Garcia contributed to this report.

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Source: Investor's Business Daily