Some of the largest private market “unicorns” are looking to go public in the next few years—signaling a reversal of what has been a relatively soft market for initial public offerings.
Aerospace giant Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, is looking to go public next year at a $1.5 trillion valuation, raising more than $30 billion in the process, according to a report from Bloomberg. The company is looking to build space-based data centers for artificial intelligence. CEO Elon Musk previously confirmed the company’s IPO plans in a social media post.
But SpaceX is only one of several companies with a valuation of at least $100 billion that are considering going public. AI companies like OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC are also reported to be preparing IPO plans. These companies were most recently valued at $500 billion and $350 billion, respectively.
Spokespeople for OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment. SpaceX could not be reached for comment.
“2026 is shaping up to be the first truly broad-based reopening of the IPO market in years,” says Elliot Han, the CIO of the C1 Fund, a closed-end investment fund designed to give investors access to C1 Advisors’ private digital asset ecosystem. “When you have OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and several large digital-asset companies such as Kraken, BitGo and Blockchain.com exploring listings, it sets a very different tone.”
Rebooting a Slow IPO Market?
The growth of the IPO market this year has been slower than anticipated, despite a pickup in listings in the second half of the year. But the number of IPOs are still on their way up from lows set in 2022.
According to EY, 2025 has seen 176 IPOs through the third quarter—approximately the same number as in 2024. While this figure is far below 2021’s peak of 416 IPOs, the total has risen slowly from a low of 90 in 2022 to 127 in 2023.
Despite a strong rebound in the equity markets driven by the AI boom, many private market companies are preferring to stay private.
“[It’s been] easier than ever for the best private companies to attract large global investors to their cap tables without needing to go through the middleman of an exchange,” says Robert Natzler, a portfolio manager for private companies at Baillie Gifford, an equity investor in SpaceX, Anthropic, defense contractor Anduril Industries Inc., cloud-based software platform provider Databricks Inc. and other large, hyped private market companies. “That trend hasn’t showed signs of slowing down.”
For founders and the boards of private companies, the decision to stay private often comes down to control and flexibility. Public markets impose stricter governance and disclosure requirements, which could be challenging for companies still refining their business models.
Public markets can offer a level of institutionalization and transparency that rounds of private capital raising cannot fully replicate, especially for companies that are becoming increasingly important to the economy.
“Public markets provide liquidity, more valuation stability and governance structures that are increasingly important as these companies become systemically relevant,” Han says. “I see the shift toward IPOs as less about funding pressure and more about institutionalizing these businesses for the next decade.”
For AI giants in particular, the scale of investment required to stay competitive is staggering—with these companies raising and spending tens of billions of dollars. OpenAI, for example, has raised $58 billion across nine funding rounds, according to startup data provider Tracxn.
“For the unicorns and the decacorns in the AI space, [they] are going to quickly run up against a wall where the amount of capital they need to stay at the leading edge and potentially consolidate with other services, companies [and] products is going to exceed what they’re going to viably be able to get in the private markets,” says Justin Yahr, the national emerging company growth leader of Deloitte’s audit and assurance group. “I think it’s going to be a necessity that the larger players in the space are going to need to go public, just based on the sheer size, scale and investment requirements they have.”
Natzler notes that the best companies will continue to have no problem raising capital.
“Truly exceptional companies should be able to find sophisticated investors and tell a story to them,” Natzler says. “There is a question though, if you are trying to do really difficult things: Why would you do those in the public markets, when you could do those in the private markets?”
Implications for the AI Theme
According to Deloitte’s “Q3 2025 Road to Next” report, 13 artificial intelligence company IPOs have accounted for 87% of all AI IPO exit value year-to-date. AI companies are also exiting faster than other private companies—in an average of 7.9 years, compared with 9.6 years for non-AI companies, Deloitte reported.
“More and more of these companies are looking at exits; the exit market is open,” Yahr says. “We’re seeing more and more companies prepping and thinking about IPOs, some over the course of the next few months and others the next 12 to 24 months.”
AI company exits from private funds are driving total exit value this year, according to the Deloitte report. In 2025 to date, exit value for AI companies reached $58 billion, far exceeding the $28.3 billion in exits that occurred in 2024. AI companies have so far accounted for 16.8% of total exit value this year, a jump from 14% in 2024 and just 3.7% in 2023.
“We have, right now, several large language models, and they [are] all competing to survive, and to survive, they need to invest a lot of money,” says David Souccar, CIO of Vontobel’s quality growth boutique. “But we know through history that not all of them are going to survive. … The financing for those LLMs so far has been through debt and through vendor financing,” a short-term way of bridging the gap to what these companies need. Souccar also notes that these companies may eventually need to tap the public markets.
Han notes that the composition of capital, not its availability, is changing, saying that top AI companies can raise billions privately, but that their next phases—including training super models and expanding digital infrastructure—require long-term investors, more transparency and a more diversified shareholder base.
As a result, “for the first time, we’re really going to understand the economics of the [large language models], how much sales they make, how much money they lose,” Souccar says.
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Tags: IPOs, Private Markets