January indicates a strong start to the IPO market

The IPO market experienced a healthy 2025, but will 2026 be the year it fully bounces back?

Almost two dozen companies valued at over a billion dollars went public last year, versus only nine in 2024, Crunchbase reported. Total valuations for billion-dollar-plus listings more than doubled 2024’s, hitting $125 billion.

Measured by proceeds raised, 202 IPOs raised a total of $44 billion in 2025, according to Renaissance Capital, up from 150 that raised $29.6 billion in 2024.

New listings could get bigger in 2026, as the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX line up advisors for their potential debuts on the public markets. Each could be a “mega-IPO” valued at over $100 billion at its listing price—and in some cases a lot more.

“Moderating inflation, anticipated interest rate cuts, and a significantly expanded backlog of IPO-ready companies” will likely fuel more new public offerings this year, PwC predicts.

Investment management firm Blackstone has lined up one of its “largest IPO pipelines in history,” President Jonathan Gray told the Financial Times.

“The markets have got liquid enough and receptive enough to take our companies public,” Gray told the FT. “The deal environment feels like it has hit escape velocity.”

If this month’s any indication, the IPO market is off to a decent start. The largest IPO by proceeds raised to date this year—$747 million—was by EquipmentShare on January 22. A digital equipment rental platform servicing jobsites, EquipmentShare also had the largest valuation at IPO to date, $6.7 billion.

Not all new issues will perform well after they hit the market, of course. The much-discussed crypto infrastructure company BitGo raised $213 million when it priced on January 21, but saw its price drop 19% as of last Friday.

“Pricing up usually means a hot deal, but clearly traders bet on a quick pop that didn’t materialize,” Renaissance Capital CEO Bill Smith wrote about the BitGo deal in email commentary on Sunday.

SPACs are back: Special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) drove much of the 2025 IPO rebound, and that trend could continue into 2026.

In 2025, two-thirds (62%) of all US companies going public did so via SPAC. Some observers argue that this new crop of SPACs is more disciplined and less speculative than the ones that emerged during 2020–21.

For instance, Eddie Best, a partner in corporate and financial services at law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, told The Street that “the current ‘wave’ is led by repeat sponsors pursuing smaller deals with more realistic valuations and stronger alignment.”

This month, more than $2 billion has been raised through SPAC IPOs, according to Bloomberg, citing data from SPAC Research.