The IPO Window Reopens: A Record First Half and What Comes Next

Khan Capitals | July 2026

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Key Takeaways

• The IPO window reopens with a record first half. US equity issuance reached about $251 billion through late June, the strongest midyear total on record, surpassing the 2021 boom.
• Two giants did the heavy lifting. SpaceX’s debut, the largest IPO in history, and Alphabet’s roughly $85 billion equity raise to fund its AI expansion drove the headline figure, a concentration that flatters the breadth of the recovery.
• The rest of the market is genuinely busy too. The second quarter saw 48 IPOs raise a record $104.9 billion, with nine deals beyond SpaceX raising more than $1 billion, led by AI chipmaker Cerebras.
• Aftermarket returns are pulling issuers off the sidelines. This year’s debutants have returned around 16% on a weighted-average basis, roughly twice the S&P 500 over the same period, the kind of performance that reopens a market.
• The window’s durability is the real question. A hawkish Fed and the largest names, notably OpenAI, still hesitating mean the reopening is real but not yet guaranteed to last.

Part of: Private Credit & Private Markets — Khan Capital’s hub on private credit and private markets.

A Record First Half

For two years the defining feature of private markets was a door that would not open. Companies that might have listed stayed private, sponsors could not exit, and the backlog of maturing venture and buyout investments grew heavier with each quarter the initial public offering market stayed shut. In the first half of 2026, the IPO window reopens, and it does so emphatically. US equity issuance reached roughly $251 billion through late June, the strongest midyear total ever recorded, eclipsing even the frenzied listing boom of 2021.

The second quarter carried the momentum. Forty-eight IPOs raised a record $104.9 billion, and even setting aside the single largest deal, it would still have been the busiest quarter for IPO proceeds since 2021. There have been 79 IPOs so far this year, with June alone producing sixteen, the most active month of the run. After a first quarter unsettled by the volatility of the Iran conflict, the market did not merely stabilise; it accelerated into the summer.

The Deals That Reopened the Door

The headline numbers rest on two transactions of a scale the market has never seen. SpaceX’s flotation, which we examined at the point of pricing in our note on the SpaceX IPO at a fixed $135, became the largest public offering in history. Alongside it, Alphabet raised roughly $85 billion in fresh equity to bankroll its artificial intelligence build-out, a follow-on rather than an IPO but a defining feature of the issuance record all the same. Between them, the two deals account for the majority of the half’s proceeds, which is both the story and the caveat: a record built on two giants is not the same as a broad-based reopening.

Look beneath the giants, though, and the activity is real. Nine IPOs besides SpaceX raised more than a billion dollars each in the second quarter, led by the AI chipmaker Cerebras, whose listing extended the artificial intelligence theme from the private into the public market. Smaller deals performed strongly too. Doncasters, listing as DPC Holdings, priced at $33 to raise around $919 million and jumped 33% on its first day. The software group Bending Spoons launched an offering of roughly $1.57 billion, and the micromobility company Lime came to market seeking about $174 million. The mix matters: when a record is accompanied by a healthy tail of mid-sized deals that trade well, the reopening has more foundation than a couple of blockbusters alone would provide.

Deal	Type	Size (approx.)	Note
SpaceX	IPO	Largest ever	Priced around $135/share
Alphabet	Equity raise	~$85bn	To fund AI expansion
Cerebras	IPO	$1bn+	AI chipmaker
Bending Spoons	IPO	~$1.57bn	Software
Doncasters (DPC)	IPO	~$0.92bn	+33% on debut
Lime	IPO	~$0.17bn	Micromobility

Why Now: Calm Markets and Pent-Up Supply

Reopenings need a trigger, and this one had several arriving together. The first is volatility, or the lack of it. The equity market spent the second quarter recovering from the Iran conflict, and as the risk premium drained out of oil and equities alike following the ceasefire, the calm conditions that issuers need to price deals returned. A company cannot float into a market lurching several per cent a day; it can into one grinding steadily higher.

The second trigger is performance. New listings have rewarded buyers this year, with the class of 2026 returning around 16% on a weighted-average basis, close to double the S&P 500 over the same stretch. Strong aftermarket trading is the single most powerful signal an IPO market can send, because it tells the next cohort of issuers that public investors are willing to pay up and that a listing will be received well rather than punished. The third trigger is simply supply. Two years of a closed window left an enormous backlog of companies that need to list, and sponsors that need to return capital to their investors. When the door opened, the queue was already long.

The Exit Bottleneck Begins to Clear

For private markets, the reopening matters far beyond the handful of companies that have actually listed. The closed IPO window was the proximate cause of a wider problem: an exit bottleneck that left private equity and venture funds unable to return cash to their investors. Distributions to limited partners had slowed to a trickle, secondary sales and sponsor-to-sponsor deals had become the main release valve, and the pressure on realised returns, the distributions-to-paid-in measure that allocators watch most closely, had been building for two years. We traced part of that strain in our work on the private credit redemption wave and the mechanics of illiquidity in the rise of semi-liquid funds.

A functioning IPO market is the classic cure. It gives sponsors a route to sell down large positions at scale, it re-rates comparable private holdings, and it restarts the flow of distributions that allows allocators to recommit to new funds. The read-through is that a sustained reopening would ease the liquidity pressure that has defined the private markets debate this year, and would matter as much to the secondaries market and the fundraising cycle as to the companies actually ringing the bell.

The OpenAI Question

No single decision will test the window’s depth more than OpenAI’s. The company filed confidentially for an IPO in early June, roughly a week after Anthropic took the same step, and the pairing was read as a signal that the defining businesses of the AI era were finally ready to face public markets. Yet by late June the mood had shifted, with reports that OpenAI was leaning towards delaying its listing from late 2026 into 2027. The hesitation is instructive. It suggests that even in a record year, the largest and most closely watched private companies are weighing whether public-market scrutiny, and the valuation discipline that comes with it, is worth accepting now rather than later.

That caution is the counterweight to the euphoria in the headline numbers. A reopening led by SpaceX and a wave of AI-adjacent names is powerful, but if the marquee private companies conclude that they can raise all the capital they need privately and prefer to wait, the window could prove narrower than the record suggests. The listing decisions of the biggest names will say more about the durability of this market than another strong month of mid-cap deals.

How Durable Is the Window?

The honest answer is that reopenings are fragile until proven otherwise. The class of 2026 has performed well, but IPO markets can shut as quickly as they open when volatility returns or aftermarket performance sours. The most obvious risk is monetary. With inflation running hot and the Federal Reserve leaning hawkish, a renewed rise in yields would compress the valuations on which growth listings depend and could chill issuance in a matter of weeks. The chart of aftermarket returns below captures the current pull, but that pull is only as durable as the calm that produced it.

The table below frames the range of outcomes for the second half without pretending to certainty.

Scenario	Conditions	Implication for issuance
Bull	Calm markets hold; aftermarket stays strong; OpenAI lists	Broad reopening; backlog clears; distributions revive
Base	Steady issuance led by large deals; marquee names wait	Healthy but concentrated market; partial backlog relief
Bear	Yields rise on hawkish Fed; aftermarket cools	Window narrows; deals pulled; bottleneck persists

Lessons From the Last Boom

It is worth remembering that the record this half surpasses was itself a warning. The listing frenzy of 2021 produced a wave of debuts at rich valuations, many of them unprofitable growth companies brought public into a market flush with cheap money. When rates rose sharply through 2022, that cohort was punished severely, a large share of the class traded well below its offer price, and the IPO market effectively closed for the best part of two years. The reopening now under way is, in part, the delayed consequence of that shutdown finally lifting.

The comparison cuts two ways. On one hand, this year’s market looks healthier at the core than 2021’s: proceeds are dominated by genuinely large, established businesses rather than speculative early-stage names, and the aftermarket has rewarded buyers rather than trapping them. On the other, the same vulnerability is present. A market that reopens on the back of calm conditions and low volatility is exposed to exactly the force that shut the last one, namely a sharp move higher in yields. The difference between a durable reopening and a brief window is likely to be decided by the rate environment, not by the appetite of issuers, which is plainly there. That is why the monetary backdrop, rather than the deal pipeline, is the variable most worth watching.

There is also a structural point that distinguishes 2026 from prior cycles. A meaningful share of this year’s activity is tied, directly or indirectly, to artificial intelligence, from Cerebras in the public market to the private capital still flowing to model developers. That concentration gives the reopening a clear engine, but it also ties its fortunes to a single theme. Should sentiment towards the AI build-out cool, the IPO pipeline that leans on it would feel the effect quickly.

Investor Implications

In equities, the reopening is a source of both opportunity and dispersion. A busy IPO calendar widens the opportunity set and has historically rewarded selective participation, but the strong average returns mask wide variation between deals, and the concentration of proceeds in a few mega-listings means index-level exposure captures only part of the story. For allocators to private markets, the more important implication is the prospect of distributions resuming. A reopened exit route eases the liquidity strain that has weighed on private equity and private credit alike, supports the secondaries market, and improves the odds that the fundraising cycle can turn.

In fixed income and at the macro level, the dependency runs through rates. This issuance boom is a creature of calm markets and contained yields, and it is therefore hostage to the inflation and policy path. Cross-asset, the reopening is one more expression of the theme that has dominated 2026: capital is flowing towards artificial intelligence and the companies built around it, whether through private funding, public listings, or the equity raises of incumbents like Alphabet. The IPO market is simply the latest channel through which that capital is moving.

What to Watch

• Late 2026: OpenAI’s listing decision, the clearest test of whether the largest private companies trust the window enough to use it now rather than in 2027.
• Through the autumn: the aftermarket performance of the 2026 class, since a run of broken deals would cool issuer appetite faster than any single data point.
• Each Fed meeting and inflation print: the yield path, the most likely mechanism by which the window could narrow.
• Private markets distributions: whether the reopening translates into a genuine revival of capital returned to limited partners, the ultimate measure of the bottleneck clearing.

Conclusion

A record first half is not the same as a durable one, and the caveats around this reopening are real: two deals did most of the work, the largest private names are still hesitating, and the whole edifice rests on calm markets and contained yields that a hawkish Fed could disturb. Yet the direction is unmistakable. After two years in which the closed IPO window was the binding constraint on private markets, capital is moving again, distributions have a route home, and issuers are finding a receptive market. When the IPO window reopens on this scale, it does more than mint a few new public companies; it begins to unclog the entire machinery of private-market liquidity that had seized up around it. Whether the door stays open is now the question that matters most.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the IPO market recovering in 2026?

Yes. US equity issuance reached a record of roughly $251 billion in the first half of 2026, and the second quarter alone saw 48 IPOs raise a record $104.9 billion. After two years of a largely closed market, issuance has reopened emphatically, though the total is concentrated in a few very large deals.

What was the biggest IPO of 2026?

SpaceX’s flotation was the largest IPO in history, and together with Alphabet’s roughly $85 billion equity raise it accounted for the majority of the first half’s record issuance. Beyond those two, nine IPOs raised more than a billion dollars each in the second quarter.

Why did the IPO window reopen?

Three factors aligned: markets calmed after the Iran conflict eased, new listings performed strongly in the aftermarket, and two years of a closed window had built a large backlog of companies needing to list. Together they gave issuers both the confidence and the incentive to come to market.

Is OpenAI going public?

OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO in early June 2026, about a week after Anthropic, but later reports suggested it was leaning towards delaying its listing into 2027. The decision is seen as an important test of how far the reopening extends to the largest private companies.

Sources: Yahoo Finance; Renaissance Capital; IPOScoop; InvestmentNews.

Related Reading: The landmark listing of the cycle is covered in the SpaceX IPO pricing, while the liquidity strain the reopening could relieve runs through the private credit redemption wave and the rise of semi-liquid funds. For the exit routes sponsors have leaned on in the meantime, see the private equity secondaries boom, and for the AI incumbent raising public capital in the same market, Alphabet’s move into the Dow. The half is placed in full context in the best quarter since 2020. The July 2026 escalation, with $14 billion trapped behind gates, is analysed in The $14 Billion Gate. Private markets’ convergence with public ones continued as the record $35bn private credit deal became tradeable. The fee income that forecast implied arrived in Wall Street’s record quarter. That reopened window has since produced the largest foreign US listing on record. Private buyers are also pulling companies the other way, as in the Apollo easyJet takeover bid. The scale the asset gatherers bring to these markets is charted in BlackRock’s record quarter.