2026 Is Poised to Be the Year of the Tech IPO. Will It Also Be the Year the AI Bubble Bursts?
SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic are all allegedly planning to raise eye-watering figures in market debuts.
2026 is already looking to be a special year for the tech industry, as the AI-loving market braces for three major tech IPOs.
Three tech giants, SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, are reportedly eyeing a market debut this year, with the potential debuts being referred to as some of the biggest ever to hit the market.
“There have only been a small number worldwide that have raised more than $20 billion but, but it’s entirely possible that OpenAI or SpaceX would be raising more than that,” University of Florida emeritus professor and IPO expert Jay Ritter told Gizmodo.
SpaceX is allegedly eyeing a market debut as early as June, and according to some reports, is expecting to raise more than $30 billion. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed IPO preparations in an X post last month, saying that Ars Technica’s reporting was “accurate.”
Despite being a space company, there is seemingly an AI angle to this IPO as well. The Ars Technica article that Musk confirmed on X posited that SpaceX was eyeing an IPO to raise enough capital to deploy data centers in space, an absurdly ambitious pitch that has been gaining considerable steam in the tech world.
OpenAI and Anthropic’s potential public offerings, on the other hand, are on less certain timelines. A Financial Times report from December said that the Claude-maker had hired the law firm Wilson Sonsini to prepare for an IPO as early as this year, but Anthropic’s chief communications officer said there were no immediate plans.
Meanwhile, a Reuters report from November said that OpenAI was planning an IPO of up to $1 trillion as early as late 2026. The report came mere days after the AI giant completed its recapitalization process to go from a non-profit to a for-profit. A valuation of that level would make OpenAI one of the most valuable publicly traded firms from the get-go.
Although company executives have rejected the reported timeline, Altman did say in October that going public was “the most likely path” for OpenAI, “given the capital needs that we’ll have, and sort of, the size of the company.”
If the reports are true, not only will these IPOs cause an already tech-driven market to level up in its frenzy, they could, at least temporarily, give the overall economy a bump.