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Consultancy EY reported that worldwide IPO proceeds hit $194 billion during the first six months of 2026, three times the total from the same period in 2025 and more than the entire previous year. The United States and China captured the majority of that activity, with a single $86 billion share listing by SpaceX in June representing nearly half the global figure. Such levels of equity market issuance have not been seen since central banks eased financing conditions to support economies recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Matthew Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said this intense frenzy of demand is really concentrated in a few sectors that are working right now, such as AI and technology, also maybe aerospace and defense, maybe biotech. Technology companies must finance hundreds of billions of dollars to develop and deploy artificial intelligence systems that debt markets and private financing cannot fully cover. Philippe Kubisa at PwC France noted there is a belief that AI responds to a long-term economic need and that now is the time to invest.
Eight of the 10 largest IPOs so far this year have occurred in the United States, half of them on the Nasdaq exchange that focuses on technology shares. EY adviser Cedric Garcia attributed much of the listing wave to financial deregulatory measures undertaken by Donald Trump since the start of his mandate. Garcia added that many companies appeared eager to complete listings before the November midterm elections, fearing that a Democratic victory could reverse those policies.
Blockbuster IPOs potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars from US artificial intelligence leaders OpenAI and Anthropic could arrive in the second half of 2026. Ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington have pushed Chinese companies that would have raised funds in the United States to turn instead to Hong Kong. PwC data places the Hong Kong exchange total at $48 billion since January, putting it on track for its strongest performance in five years, highlighted by the $3 billion debut of Nvidia supplier Victory Giant.
Goldman Sachs research placed baseline annual AI capital expenditure at $765 billion for 2026, part of a cumulative $7.6 trillion projected across compute infrastructure, data centers and power through 2031. A separate Futurum Group assessment found that five major US cloud and AI infrastructure providers plan capital spending between $660 billion and $690 billion this year, nearly double 2025 levels. These enormous financing requirements explain why public markets have become central to the sector’s expansion.
PwC’s Kubisa warned that gigantic deals can already drain liquidity from the market and may create situations in which there is more supply than demand, weighing on prices. EY’s Garcia stated that if a financial bubble were to burst or if prices remained in a sustained downward trend, the flow could dry up. SpaceX shares have already slipped below their initial listing value since mid-July while activity in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region has stayed flat at $16 billion, though the Amsterdam debut of Czech defence group CSG at $4.47 billion ranked as the third-largest global IPO of the year.
