SAN FRANCISCO — Call it the year of the mega initial public offering. Or the year of the IPO supercycle. Or the monster listing mania, perhaps.
At least three of the most valuable and highest-profile tech companies are preparing to list their shares on the public market, setting up a watershed moment for Silicon Valley and its artificial intelligence boom.
Anthropic and OpenAI, two prominent AI companies, have taken early steps to go public, people familiar with the companies said. And SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, has interviewed banks to lead an IPO, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Any one of those private companies would be among the most valuable to go public, after Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut valued the energy giant at $1.7 trillion. Anthropic is in funding talks that would value it at $350 billion, while OpenAI is worth $500 billion, and SpaceX was most recently valued at $800 billion.
“We’re going to get into a period of potentially unprecedented IPO deal sizes,” said Eddie Molloy, global co-head of equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley, not referring to any companies in particular. “But we are confident they’re executable given the scale of these companies and the investor interest.”
These listings could create an enormous bonanza for Wall Street and Silicon Valley after years of lackluster offerings. They could set off a feeding frenzy among public market investors who have been waiting to get a piece of the AI boom, and Wall Street banks stand to make hundreds of millions facilitating the listings.
That is stoking more excitement for the AI boom as it enters its fourth year, even as the question of a bubble intensifies.
“In two decades, I haven’t seen private companies that are this meaningful and are this impactful,” said Jeremy Abelson, an investor at Irving Investors, a firm that backs startups before they go public. “Not only are they bigger and more relevant, but they’re incredible companies with numbers that we’ve never seen before, ever.”
Any increase in volatility, geopolitical risk, or uncertainty around the midterm elections — or if they simply are not ready — could mean the companies do not go public until later. Anthropic and OpenAI in particular are very early in the process. In December, Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco, asked law firm Wilson Sonsini to help it begin preparations to go public, a person familiar with the situation said. The move was reported earlier by The Financial Times.
OpenAI, also in San Francisco, spent 2025 converting from a nonprofit to a for-profit company with the goal of going public. In a December podcast interview, chief executive Sam Altman said that he was “zero percent” excited about leading a public company, but that OpenAI needed to keep raising more money.
SpaceX, founded 24 years ago, has made the most concrete moves toward going public. The company, incorporated in Texas, has interviewed banks and announced its IPO intentions to shareholders. It has emphasized the AI angle of its business, telling investors that it plans to use the proceeds from a listing to build AI data centers in space.
OpenAI and Anthropic declined to comment. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, over copyright infringement of news content. Both companies have denied wrongdoing.)
IPOs have been in a slump since 2021, when 397 companies raised $142 billion in the United States, according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks listings. Last year, 202 companies went public in the United States, raising $44 billion. Momentum was hurt by uncertainty around tariffs and the government shutdown last fall, said Jeff Thomas, the head of listings at Nasdaq.
Even one giant IPO in 2026 could encourage others to take the plunge. Some smaller startups have already taken steps to list their shares this year. Motive Technologies, which provides AI software and hardware, filed a prospectus last month for a public offering, and Kraken, a crypto exchange, submitted a confidential filing in November.
“When these megadeals happen, it takes some of the air out of the room,” Thomas said. “You want to try to get ahead of it.”
The IPOs could end the AI bubble debate by providing a detailed look at the businesses, investors said. Just as Facebook’s initial public offering in 2012 solidified social media as a large business, these IPOs could bring AI and space into the mainstream and test their moneymaking viability. So far, the companies have shared only limited information about their growth, deal-making, and spending.
“There is such a big information gap right now,” said Jeff Richards, an investor at Notable Capital, a venture capital firm that has backed Anthropic. “The biggest positive for this entire market would be if a bunch of these companies went public and people could actually see the numbers.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Sign in to read the full article.
Sign in with Google