Wall Street bankers are predicting a busy second half after SpaceX's $86 billion listing and Alphabet's $85 billion share sale pushed issuance past the 2021 peak
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Fresh data from Bloomberg put first-half U.S. equity issuance at a record $251 billion through June 26, surpassing what had been the strongest midyear tally ever — a mark set during the listing frenzy of 2021. Two landmark transactions drove the record: Alphabet $GOOGL's $85 billion equity raise, pursued to bankroll its artificial intelligence expansion, and the debut of SpaceX, whose $86.2 billion offering eclipsed every previous IPO in history.
Goldman Sachs $GS's co-head of equity capital markets in the Americas, Will Connolly, cautioned against attributing the surge solely to the SpaceX transaction. "Even if you take out SpaceX's IPO, volumes are advancing rapidly," he said, adding: "There's a lot of activity across the ecosystem and across different products. It's really the first time you could say that since 2021."
Bloomberg data show SpaceX's listing was among 11 IPOs that cleared the $1 billion threshold in the first six months of the year. JPMorgan $JPM Chase's Keith Canton, who heads private capital advisory and solutions globally, said he anticipates a comparable crop of billion-dollar-plus listings before year-end, with buyout-backed companies poised to be a primary source. Canton explained his reasoning to the outlet: "Some of their companies are very high quality and very large, so they may have outgrown M&A as an option, so I'd expect to see some of them start to come to the public market."
At Morgan Stanley $MS, co-head of global equity capital markets Arnaud Blanchard pointed to calendar risk as a reason deals may cluster in the coming months rather than spread evenly across the second half. "While Q4 is typically a constructive window, we could see some volatility around the midterm elections and so second half activity is likely to be front-loaded into Q3," he said.
SpaceX made its Nasdaq $NDAQ debut on June 12 under the ticker SPCX, pricing at $135 per share before the stock opened at $150 and touched an intraday high of $176.52. Exercise of the underwriters' greenshoe brought the offering's cumulative proceeds to $86.2 billion. The company operates the Starlink satellite internet service and a fleet of reusable rockets, and acquired Elon Musk's AI venture xAI in February.
SpaceX stock subsequently fell sharply, shedding roughly $400 billion in market capitalization across a four-session losing streak that included a 16% single-day decline. Despite the retreat, SpaceX stock has held above its IPO price. Bloomberg data show that 2026's crop of U.S. debutants — stripping out blank-check vehicles — has generated a weighted-average return approaching 16%, a figure that runs at roughly twice the pace of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
Days after the IPO, SpaceX entered the public bond market with a senior unsecured notes offering targeting at least $20 billion, with proceeds earmarked in part to repay a bridge loan and fund its AI infrastructure buildout.
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