The IPO market has clearly reopened, but it no longer looks like it was in 2021. There are fewer candidates, while the deals are much larger. In six months, $193.6bn was raised, triple the amount a year earlier. But a single transaction alone accounts for nearly half the total.
On June 12, SpaceX lists on the Nasdaq at $135 a share. Including the overallotment, the deal raises $85.7bn. The biggest IPO in history, by a long way. The previous record, Saudi Aramco in 2019, topped out below $30bn. Musk nearly pulled off three Aramcos in one shot. That day, everyone reached the same conclusion: IPOs are back. Let’s check the figures…
Records, but we should count carefully
The numbers seem to support them. $193.6bn raised worldwide in H1 2026, versus $62.4bn a year earlier, according to EY. Three times more. Take SpaceX out of the total and $108bn remains, still 73% higher than a year earlier. The rebound is not all about Musk. Now, set the billions aside and count the deals. 509 IPOs in early 2026, 548 in early 2025. Fewer companies are going public, but for a lot more money. Nothing like 2021, with nearly 2,400 IPOs and $455bn for the full year, according to EY, back when a SPAC with no business or a unicorn with no profits could easily find buyers.
Source: EY analysis
A global total, recoveries at different speeds
That global total also masks markets that are not living the same year. Asia-Pacific staged its rebound without a mega-deal: 247 IPOs versus 232, with 60% more money raised. Europe, meanwhile, is left with crumbs. Its 53 deals and $9.3bn are up, but the entire European half-year would fit inside a single large US transaction, and nearly half came from the Czech group CSG alone. As for Paris: €42.8m on the board with Rising Stone and Ieva Group.
The real step-change happened in the Americas. Amounts there jumped from $17.2bn to $130.4bn in a year, still according to EY, even as the number of deals fell from 117 to 85.
Reserved for big tickets
Do the math. In the first half of 2025, an IPO in the Americas raised an average of $147m. A year later, over $1.5bn. SpaceX crushes the average, of course. Remove it and the ticket still tops $500m, over triple last year’s level. And SpaceX does not explain everything: eleven US IPOs raised more than $1bn in the half, versus four a year earlier, according to EY.
Source: EY analysis
The remaining question is who gets the ticket. Unsurprisingly, tech takes the pot: 93 deals for $28.6bn, with amounts up 218% y-o-y, according to EY. Investors are screening companies on three criteria that would have drawn laughs in 2021, the firm sums up: profitability, visibility, and execution discipline. The promise of growth is no longer enough on its own, you have to show the numbers and convince investors you can deliver on what you are promising.
And it’s not over
Anthropic is said to be considering a listing as soon as October. OpenAI has filed, but is now considering waiting until 2027. It has to be said that SpaceX, once it went first, is not exactly encouraging anyone. The stock has broken below its $135 IPO price and trades around $123, 45% below its June 16 peak.
China, meanwhile, is not waiting. Memory maker CXMT lists in Shanghai on July 27, investors have already requested 570 times more shares than are available, and a pre-IPO derivative is even trading at six times the IPO price. Moonshot, the developer of the Kimi model, is targeting Hong Kong within six months. And DeepSeek is preparing its own listing in Shanghai, according to Bloomberg. On the US side, Discord, Oura, Strava, and Kraken have filed and are waiting their turn. Enough to keep bankers busy through Christmas.
A mega-IPO proves that the market can fund companies that are already large, prepared, and well positioned on the themes of the moment. It does not say whether the rebound will broaden to the rest of the market. Banks believe it will: JPMorgan expects around a dozen deals of over $1bn by December, and some funds are betting that gains pocketed on SpaceX will be reinvested into more modest stories. Two things will tell us: how mid-sized IPOs perform in the second half, and what happens to the AI giants waiting in the wings. Because the opposite scenario also exists: one spectacular flop from a single one of them would be enough to slam the window shut for everyone. See you in the fall.
