7 Best Recent and Upcoming IPOs in 2026
The initial public offering market has made headlines in the first half of 2026 thanks to powerhouse IPOs like Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (ticker: SPCX), better known as SpaceX. But perhaps the bigger underlying story is the downward share-price movement after some big companies went public.
Take Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is down more than 30% in the past month after going public on June 12, or Wealthfront Corp. (WLTH), with shares down 33% year to date, after its public debut in December 2025.
Across the VC-backed IPO universe (excluding life sciences), several newly public companies have delivered positive returns from their IPO price through June 30, 2026, while many others remain below issue price, underscoring the continued importance of company quality, sector exposure, valuation discipline and post-IPO earnings,” said data solutions firm Forge Global in a recent IPO review.
Out of 20 IPOs tracked by Forge that went public since the first quarter of 2025, seven had positive performance through the second quarter of 2026. “This pattern highlights a key point for late-stage private market investors: Strong IPO demand does not necessarily translate into durable public market performance,” the report noted.
The broader stock market has certainly posted good returns, with the S&P 500 up 9.7% in 2026. However, the choppy status of the IPO market bears watching for the second half of 2026.
“I’d describe the 2026 IPO market as healthy, but extremely uneven,” says Dean Ferraro, CEO and chief compliance officer at Longhouse Wealth Management. “The headline numbers look spectacular because a few enormous offerings, especially SpaceX, have driven a disproportionate amount of the capital raised.”
In the second quarter, 48 U.S. IPOs raised nearly $105 billion, but SpaceX alone accounted for $75 billion of that total. “That tells me investor appetite is real, particularly for AI, aerospace and other emerging technologies, but it is still highly selective,” Ferraro says.
That trend also shows the IPO market is open for compelling businesses, but investors are no longer giving every new listing a free pass. “Companies still need a credible growth story, a defensible competitive advantage and a valuation that leaves something on the table for public investors,” Ferraro adds.
The outsized role technology companies, especially artificial intelligence, are playing in the 2026 IPO market is also worth tracking.
“We just had the biggest IPO in history, and there’s more to come,” says Kyle Reidhead, co-owner and head of research at Milk Road, a stock market research platform. Reidhead noted that SpaceX opened at a valuation of just under $2 trillion, and he believes OpenAI and Anthropic will both probably garner above $1 trillion. “We’ve never had an IPO around a trillion before,” he adds. “As long as you’re in the AI space, the opportunity to IPO is huge. If you’re in other industries, you’re delaying, because capital is getting completely sucked out of that market and moving into AI.”
So which stocks stand tallest in a bull market for IPOs? Here’s a closer look at several recent big IPOs, along with a short list of potential supernovas that top the list for the second half of the year:
| RECENT/UPCOMING IPO | IPO INITIAL VALUATION/ESTIMATE |
| Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX; started trading June 12) | $1.8 trillion |
| OpenAI | $852 billion to $1 trillion |
| Anthropic | $965 billion to $1 trillion |
| Anduril Industries | $61 billion |
| Databricks | $188 billion |
| Jersey Mike’s Subs Inc. (JMKE) | $7.9 billion |
| Stripe | $159 billion |
