The year 2026 has only just begun, and the queue of prospectuses on Wall Street is already long.
In 2013, Musk once said SpaceX would never go public, but the latest news shows that Musk wants to combine rockets and AI: SpaceX and xAI plan to merge and go public this year. The IPO target valuation may reach $1.5 trillion. What made Musk suddenly change his mind?
OpenAI is preparing for an IPO in the fourth quarter, hoping to beat Anthropic to the market first;
The usually low-key Anthropic has also quietly hired lawyers;
Databricks, Cerebras… a group of giants who usually only live in financing press releases—why are they all lining up to ring the bell in 2026?
What factors are influencing AI companies' IPOs?
Besides these three giants, will other potential AI companies secretly file as well?
01. Why 2026
2026 becoming a node for large-scale overseas AI company listings is essentially the result of three forces converging: the funding window, the regulatory rhythm, and industry competition.
Relevant data shows that in 2025 the U.S. IPO market clearly rebounded, with 202 companies completing IPOs, a 35% increase over 2024. Total fundraising reached $44 billion, an increase of nearly 50% over 2024.
Technology and innovation-driven enterprises such as the AI infrastructure company CoreWeave entered the capital market on the back of the explosion in AI demand. The software unicorn Figma produced the largest first-day gain in the history of billion-dollar IPOs. AI-related companies became the most closely watched "protagonists" in the broader market.
According to an authoritative forecast by Gartner, total global artificial intelligence spending in 2026 will reach $2.52 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 44%. This market atmosphere provides better market acceptance and a pricing foundation for AI companies going public.
(Table: Global AI market spending, 2025-2027)
Regulation and geopolitics are becoming stricter. AI safety, data compliance, export controls, and uncertainty in the computing power supply chain have become discount factors that cannot be ignored in valuation systems. For companies, the earlier they complete a listing at a stage when the rules are relatively clear, the greater their chance of gaining capital market recognition with higher certainty.
The competitive landscape of the global AI industry has evolved from competition over model parameter scale to a contest of the trinity of "computing power + data + ecosystem."
Massive capital expenditure (expected to jump from $350 billion in 2025 to $500 billion in 2026) is building a solid market foundation. Leading AI companies that can survive the fierce inference cost war and establish a solid enterprise customer base already have the strength and need to impact the public market.
02. Which overseas AI companies have announced IPO plans
OpenAI
OpenAI's IPO is one of the most closely watched events in the global capital market in 2026.
From a financial perspective, OpenAI's valuation logic has shifted from the early "technology premium" to a "platform premium." Despite astonishing computing power expenses (2025: computing power 1.9 GW, ARR exceeding $20 billion), thanks to ChatGPT's huge subscriber base and the deep penetration of its API business on the enterprise side, the revenue growth curve has shown an almost vertical trend.
OpenAI 2023-2025 computing power expenditure and revenue
Regarding the listing pace, the company has not yet given a clear timetable. Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, said OpenAI is making preliminary preparations for a potential IPO and is considering filing with securities regulators as early as possible in the second half of 2026, with a valuation target of possibly as high as $1 trillion and plans to raise at least $60 billion.
If OpenAI can successfully list in 2026, it will become one of the largest tech IPOs in history.
The funds raised will be used to support the infrastructure investment needed for training even larger AI models in the future (such as AI-optimized servers) and to accelerate the commercialization process.
The challenges are:
- Matching profitability with a high valuation: How to prove to the public market that a valuation as high as $1 trillion has sustainable profit support;
- Regulation and governance structure: It must properly handle the intricate distribution of interests with Microsoft, as well as the balance between pursuing profit and maintaining AI safety.
- Intensifying competition: It needs to maintain technological leadership under fierce attack from giants such as Google, Meta, and Anthropic.
Anthropic
Anthropic focuses on "Constitutional AI" and safety. It is OpenAI's most direct competitor in the field of general large models.
Anthropic has hired top law firms to pave the way for a public listing, with the goal of an IPO in 2026. Its pre-IPO valuation may reach $350 billion.
The listing goal is to raise funds through the public market, strengthen its capital strength to compete with giants such as OpenAI, bring the narrative of "responsible AI" into mainstream investment view, and validate its business model.
The challenges are:
- Differentiated competition: In a large-model market with homogeneous functions, how to clearly explain to investors the long-term commercial value and moat of its "safety" features;
- Huge losses and burn rate: Like all top AI labs, Anthropic faces extremely high R&D and computing costs and needs to show the market a clear path to profitability.
SpaceX
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 and is the world's dominant launch service provider, operating the Starlink satellite internet constellation. Core links such as rocket recovery, satellite operations, and mission planning are highly dependent on AI algorithms.
SpaceX is considering an IPO around mid-June 2026. The market predicts that SpaceX aims to raise $50 billion at a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, which is expected to set a historical record.
If SpaceX successfully goes public, it will redefine the capital market value of "space technology" and demonstrate the enormous potential of AI applications in extremely complex physical systems.
Investors will pay more attention to Starlink's user growth, profitability, and global licensing progress, as well as the maturity of fully reusable rocket technology (Starship).
The challenges are:
- Business complexity: Investors need to evaluate the value and risks of multiple business lines at the same time, including its launch services, Starlink internet, and long-term interstellar exploration;
- The "Musk premium" and volatility: The company's valuation is deeply tied to Musk's personal influence, which may bring additional sentiment premium and volatility;
- The bottomless pit of capital expenditure: The R&D of next-generation projects such as Starship requires continuous massive investment.
Databricks
Databricks is a technology company focused on the integration of data and AI. Its core product is the "Lakehouse" platform, which integrates data warehousing and AI training functions and serves enterprise-level data processing and AI model development. It has more than 10,000 enterprise customers, and its valuation may reach $134 billion.
Its business model centers on its data platform, achieving a highly sticky customer base by providing data processing, AI training, and enterprise-level solutions.
Attention needs to be paid to its differentiated advantages in data security and AI technology competition.
Stripe
Stripe is a payment technology company primarily handling global electronic payment business, processing $1.4 trillion in transactions in 2024, with business covering e-commerce, cryptocurrency, and cross-border payments.
As a leader in fintech, Stripe achieved automated fraud detection and complex global tax management through AI in 2026, and its payment infrastructure has become fully intelligent.
The valuation target is $60 billion to $90 billion. The IPO benefits from the expansion of the global payments market, but it needs to address regulatory risks (such as antitrust review) and competitive pressure (such as PayPal and Square).
Revolut
Revolut is a British fintech company providing digital banking, cryptocurrency, and cross-border financial services, with business covering more than 40 countries or regions and a valuation of $75 billion. Its goal is to improve accessibility of financial services through technological innovation. It will list in London or New York in 2026.
Canva
Through deep integration of generative design tools, Canva completely disrupted the creative productivity process, proving that AI can significantly improve SaaS companies' user stickiness and average revenue per user.
It has more than 170 million users and a valuation of $42 billion. The IPO benefits from the growth of AI applications in the design field, but it needs to address competitive pressure (such as Adobe and Figma) and the sustainability of user growth.
03. Potential IPO Candidate Companies
In addition to the giants in different fields above, 2026 may also witness companies leading in different AI sub-sectors enter the public market.
Potential Candidate 1: xAI
Another AI company under Musk, developing AI that understands the essence of the universe, with its product Grok already integrated into the social platform X. It represents the direction of deep integration of AI with social media and real-time data.
xAI's greatest advantage is the synergy of the "Musk ecosystem," including data integration with the X platform, potential application scenarios at Tesla, and more.
The latest news says that xAI is taking a different path and plans to IPO through a merger with SpaceX.
xAI's business model is described as "trading capital for time," with an extremely fast burn rate. The main challenges for the IPO are the difficulty of anchoring valuation (lack of traditional financial metrics) and the complexity of corporate governance and control arrangements. Investors will be highly vigilant about possible conflicts of interest for Musk across multiple listed companies.
Potential Candidate 2: Cerebras, Lambda Labs
Like Databricks, these companies represent key forces in the AI infrastructure layer. Cerebras is a manufacturer specializing in giant AI chips; Lambda Labs provides AI computing cloud services.
Against the backdrop of explosive growth in AI spending, companies serving the "shovels" and "utilities" of AI development have strong IPO demand and high market acceptance. With clearer business models and enterprise customer revenue, valuations may be relatively rational.
The challenge lies in fierce industry competition (such as against giants like Nvidia and AWS) and the risk of technological路线.
04. Some Sharing
AI technology is evolving from a single modality to cross-modal learning and is beginning to handle more complex interactions with the physical world. AI's application scenarios and commercial value have therefore broadened.
Gartner predicts that global AI market spending will reach as high as $2.5 trillion in 2026. The market is moving from pilots to large-scale procurement, and budgets will flow more concentratedly to products and infrastructure that can truly improve efficiency and reduce costs.
The IPO boom of super assets such as SpaceX and xAI looks exciting, but the risks should not be underestimated.
Governments will increasingly scrutinize AI monopolies, data sovereignty, and algorithmic discrimination. But in the end, the capital market recognizes only one thing: whether growth can be converted into cash flow, whether inference costs can continue to fall, and whether enterprise customers can form long-term renewals.
For investors, 2026 is more like a reset of the pricing mechanism. The trillion-dollar wave of IPOs will not only create new myths, but also accelerate the shakeout, determining which companies can continue to expand with lower-cost capital and which will be forced to exit under cost wars and regulatory pressure. This is the real watershed for the tech and capital landscape over the next decade.
Original link:xAI and OpenAI both going public? 2026 may be the inaugural year of AI IPOs