tech giants are lining up blockbuster IPOs

Sunday 28 December 2025 16:26

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For more than a decade, Silicon Valley’s most influential companies have remained private longer than ever before, backed by a wealth of capital and sovereign wealth funding.

However, as interest rates remain high, AI infrastructure costs balloon and some of the world’s largest private companies begin to evolve into businesses of national importance and increasingly geopolitical importance, public markets are starting to come back into view.

This isn’t exactly an IPO boom, as executives continue to insist they’re in no rush, and in many cases, they’re probably sincere.

But in the fields of AI, aerospace, and enterprise software, a cluster of companies is now large, capital-hungry, and operationally complex enough that preparing to go public has become increasingly difficult. 2026 appears as a reasonable year, although it is still not official.

AI capital issues

Anthropic is the most explicit in laying the groundwork.

The AI ​​Lab, which is backed by Amazon, has hired Wilson Sonsini, a law firm closely tied to leading US tech companies, to advise on public market readiness, as reported earlier this month.

The company said this was a prudent move and not just a gesture of intent, but that the timing was right.

Training new AI models now requires a multibillion-dollar commitment to computing, energy, and long-term cloud contracts.

Even for companies that can raise private capital at attractive valuations, the balance between flexibility and permanence has shifted.

Anthropic’s latest funding round values ​​the business at more than $300 billion (£221 billion), but maintaining that trend means securing financing on less stringent terms.

Elsewhere, OpenAI is in a more awkward position, with Reuters recently reporting that the company is preparing for a potential IPO in the second half of 2026, perhaps at a valuation approaching $1 trillion.

Publicly, OpenAI played down the idea. Sam Altman even questioned whether the scrutiny and short-termism of public markets is appropriate for an organization tasked with building general-purpose AI.

But OpenAI’s own estimates show the tension. Revenues are rising rapidly, as are obligations on long-term contracts for chips and data centers that will last many years into the future.

It is this magnitude of commitment that makes the question of a sustainable capital structure increasingly difficult to avoid, regardless of whether an IPO is the chosen answer or not.

SpaceX and the boundaries of privacy

If OpenAI reflects the financial pressures facing AI, then SpaceX represents the limits of private ownership at scale.

It is reported that Elon Musk’s company will list its shares in early mid to late 2026, with a potential valuation of up to $1.5 trillion.

Musk has not confirmed a timetable, but he acknowledged that reports of IPO preparations are generally accurate.

What has changed is the business mix. About 70 percent of SpaceX’s revenue now comes from Starlink, its satellite broadband division, which has millions of customers and a recurring revenue model that is increasingly familiar to public market investors.

Space launches still require a lot of capital and are unpredictable. Look at Starlink, which otherwise resembles a global telecommunications operator.

Still, a record close to the numbers being discussed requires confidence not only in Starlink’s growth, but also in SpaceX’s ability to execute Starship and maintain its technological lead as China accelerates its own commercial space ambitions.

This is not an overblown question, but rather a question of whether private markets can continue to absorb the scale of investment that companies require.

A quieter win

Elsewhere, second-tier late-stage tech companies look more like the conventional IPO path.

Databricks and Canva, in particular, are similar businesses that have spent several years deliberately preparing for the public market rather than flirting with it.

Databricks, whose data and analytics software comprises a large part of the modern AI stack, now generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue, and has told investors that it is cash flow positive.

The company raised funding this year at a valuation of about $134 billion, proving its status as one of the world’s most valuable private software companies.

Chief executive Ali Ghodsi was candid by Silicon Valley standards, and admitted that a public listing was a “natural outcome” for a business of this size.

However, he emphasized that time is the most important thing. And with business customers increasingly sensitive to stability and long-term roadmaps, amid talk of a so-called AI bubble, a share listing could provide as much certainty as liquidity.

Canva’s path is even more methodical. This design platform has more than 250 million monthly active users worldwide and continues to expand beyond consumer graphics.

The company has conducted several internal share sales to provide liquidity to employees, changed its governance structure, and hired senior financial executives with public markets experience, all of which are pre-IPO signals.

However, its founders, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, continued to emphasize independence, saying that profitability and product expansion should come before flotation.

What differentiates these companies from AI labs and space ventures is their predictability. Revenues continue to grow, capital requirements are manageable, and the business model is well understood by investors.

So, if the IPO window does reopen, it may be these quieter, less spectacular names that will test it first.