SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic lead 'most robust' IPO pipeline in a decade

The IPO market is waking up after years of hibernation, and the companies leading the charge are not your typical Wall Street debutantes. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—three firms built on artificial intelligence, rockets, and the infrastructure to power both—are preparing to reshape how capital flows through the global economy in 2026. Alongside them sit Inspire Brands, which owns Dunkin' Donuts and Buffalo Wild Wings, and a handful of other tech firms that have been waiting in the wings for conditions to shift. The moment has arrived, and the numbers are staggering.

SpaceX filed its preliminary prospectus this week with ambitions to raise $80 billion, valuing Elon Musk's aerospace company between $1.75 and $2 trillion. The scale is almost incomprehensible: traders at Bankinter note the company would be valued at 105 times its 2025 sales of $18.7 billion. The IPO is scheduled for June 12 under the ticker "SPCX," a date chosen with deliberate symbolism—it falls just before Musk's 55th birthday on June 28, coinciding with America's 250th anniversary and an unusual planetary alignment between Venus and Jupiter. The prospectus itself reads like a manifesto for human expansion beyond Earth. Musk writes of wanting to wake each morning believing the future will be extraordinary, of building a spacefaring civilization, of imagining nothing more thrilling than venturing among the stars. SpaceX's ambitions extend to lunar transport, Mars operations, and beyond—ventures that could reshape terrestrial industries and create trillion-dollar markets in space. The company's Starlink division, with over 10 million subscribers, already generates 70 percent of annual revenue. In January, SpaceX acquired the AI startup xAI, further cementing its position at the intersection of space exploration and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, is preparing its own debut between September and year-end, targeting $60 billion in capital and a valuation between $730 billion and $1 trillion. The company, led by Sam Altman and advised by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, has been signing billion-dollar contracts with AMD, Oracle, and the Pentagon to boost revenues before going public. Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI model and backed by Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, is aiming for October with a $30 billion raise and a $900 billion valuation. Together, these three AI firms could mobilize tens of billions of dollars in a period of significant economic uncertainty.

The catalyst driving this surge is not temporary or cyclical—it is structural. Artificial intelligence has become the dominant investment theme globally, triggering an industrial race for energy infrastructure, computing power, semiconductors, and language models without parallel. João Queiroz, head of trading at Banco Carregosa, calls this year's IPO pipeline "without exaggeration, the most robust in the last decade." He describes three concentric circles: a core of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, followed by a second ring including Databricks and Stripe. The timing is no accident. Investment banks on Wall Street are clearly capitalizing on a favorable market window. Henrique Tomé, analyst at XTB, notes that when Alibaba went public in 2014 for $22 billion, AI and commercial space exploration were not even valuation criteria. Today, they are precisely the two themes capturing investor appetite most intensely. SpaceX possesses both, giving it a long-term narrative without equivalent among publicly traded companies.

Inspire Brands, the restaurant holding company, submitted a confidential IPO request on May 8, seeking a $20 billion valuation. With more than 33,300 restaurants worldwide and annual revenue of $33.4 billion, the offering could rank among the largest ever in the food service sector. Databricks, a Silicon Valley cloud data platform valued at $134 billion after raising $5 billion in February, is also in the pipeline, though some analysts question whether going public serves its interests when it can grow without quarterly disclosure obligations. Stripe, the fintech giant valued at $159 billion after a secondary share sale, has cooled on near-term IPO plans. Cofounder John Collison told CNBC in February that an IPO would be "a solution in search of a problem" when the company is self-sustaining and growing rapidly.

Queiroz identifies four reasons the IPO market has shifted from years of inertia. First is the gravitational pull of AI itself. Second is volatility normalization—the VIX ended 2025 around 15 points, enabling rigorous pricing and deliberate planning. Third is the maturation of private tech unicorns: companies with combined valuations exceeding $3.6 trillion are pressing for liquidity as venture funds from 2017-2020 approach the end of their investment horizons and employees have waited too long for returns. Fourth is regulatory environment. Paul Atkins at the SEC has signaled a more permissive stance toward capital formation, with moves to lighten disclosure requirements for emerging growth companies, reducing admission costs and shortening procedural timelines.

Yet beneath this enthusiasm lies a concentration of risk few discuss candidly. Historically, the ten largest IPOs by initial capitalization have fallen a median of 31 percent in their first year, and most have underperformed the S&P 500 since debut. Moments of market exuberance typically coincide with late-cycle phases, not their beginnings. SpaceX and its peers are not typical IPO candidates, and their performance should not be mistaken for a signal about the broader market. The window is open, the capital is ready, and the vision is audacious. What happens when these companies meet the demands of public shareholders remains to be seen.