Analysis
238 companies have gone public on US exchanges in 2026 through September 7, according to IPO-tracking data -- essentially flat with 2025's pace of 233 IPOs by the same date. That headline number hides a market splitting into two very different tiers.
At the top, a handful of mega-cap technology listings are doing more dollar volume than the rest of the year's IPOs combined. SpaceX's early-June debut alone raised more than $85 billion at close to a $1.8 trillion market cap, Yahoo Finance reported. Anthropic is preparing a fall listing that bankers are now modeling as high as $2 trillion, which would make it one of the largest public offerings in market history on its own.
“Underneath that, the week's S-1 docket keeps running at its usual pace.”
Underneath that, the week's S-1 docket keeps running at its usual pace. CDT Equity and Evolution Metals & Technologies both filed September 8, joining the AiXCrypto, Laser Photonics and Orion180 registrations Pulse covered days earlier -- small-float, thinly-institutional filings that rarely see meaningful first-day volume regardless of how hot the mega-cap tier gets.
For anyone pricing a private round off "the IPO window is open," the distinction matters: the window is wide open for companies that can credibly claim AI infrastructure or frontier-model status, and largely unchanged for everyone else.
