Blockbuster SpaceX listing could suck the oxygen out of fragile IPO market

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

As Elon Musk’s SpaceX closes in on a US$75 billion IPO that could rewrite record books, concerns are mounting that others looking to list in 2026 may find it harder to get deals done under the shadow of the space venture’s headline-grabbing debut.

U.S. markets, prized for their depth, face a critical test, as more than half a dozen analysts and industry experts told Reuters that the SpaceX deal would likely absorb an outsized share of investor demand, squeezing out other hopefuls.

“History tells us that a mega IPO like SpaceX can suck up the oxygen in the market. We saw that with Facebook in 2012,” said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs.

“IPOs are a major marketing event, and companies wouldn’t want the noise from a SpaceX offering to drown out coverage of their own deals. So, listing activity may die down a bit during the weeks surrounding the SpaceX IPO.”

Companies have waited years on the sidelines for favorable IPO conditions after a prolonged dry spell. A listing like SpaceX, with its celebrity billionaire CEO, hot industry and deep-pocketed backers, could have provided the jolt others need to push ahead.

• Latest updates on company news here

Instead, its sheer scale threatens to overshadow others, with Wall Street banks and investors pouring a majority of their attention, and money, into the operator of the Starlink constellation of satellites.

Thirty-five IPOs have priced so far this year, according to data from Renaissance Capital, down 37.5 per cent from a year earlier. That could worsen in the months ahead, clouding hopes of a broader market resurgence in 2026.

Disruptions weigh on IPO market

The IPO market has lined up its biggest pipeline in decades, analysts and bankers said.

But the war in Iran, spiking oil prices, private credit concerns and AI-led disruption to legacy software firms have set a high bar for which deals successfully break through the volatility - and which ones get left behind.

Now, alongside these disruptions, companies eyeing IPOs must also compete for attention in a market dominated by SpaceX headlines.

While bankers will probably advise their biggest clients against competing against SpaceX, smaller listings may benefit, said Michael Ashley Schulman, partner at wealth management firm Cerity Partners.

“Smaller IPO debuts may benefit from a tag-along effect in retail enthusiasm that could mentally lump IPOs together under the assumption that if one does well, others will too,” he said.

More mega deals to come

Timing an IPO is often as crucial to a listing’s success as the company’s fundamentals. May through June is typically the best window before a summer lull that defers larger offerings to the fall.

While Musk is hoping to take SpaceX public in June, according to bankers, OpenAI and rival Anthropic are reportedly aiming for a debut in the second half of the year.

“The attention that these mega IPOs take from the market could push a broadly open IPO window into 2027,” PitchBook analyst Kyle Stanford said in a report.

The report added that if SpaceX raises between $50 billion and $75 billion, while OpenAI and Anthropic raise another $50 billion combined, that would roughly match the total raised by U.S. VC-backed company IPOs over the past decade.

“Media attention is not the only thing these mega IPOs could absorb. IPO underwriting would be constrained by the amount these companies are able to raise,” Stanford wrote.

‘Muskonomy’ vs market realities

To be sure, it’s uncharted territory - no offering of this size has been attempted before.

Analysts and experts said the absence of any clear precedent or comparable listing leaves investors with little to anchor expectations, making it harder to gauge how the market will respond to SpaceX’s IPO.

“SpaceX is going to be big, no doubt about it,” said James Angel, faculty affiliate at Georgetown McDonough’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy.

“The combination of well-known brands like X and Starlink, along with the magic of AI, the dream of space, and Musk’s magic means that the investment bankers will have little trouble generating interest in the stock.”

Elon Musk has built a track record of pulling in investor demand across cycles, with his ventures often dominating attention. His empire, dubbed “Muskonomy” by analysts, creates a concentration of capital that few offerings can match.

That concentration of investor interest is not just theoretical, it has played out in past listings.

• Latest updates on investing here

Musk’s EV maker Tesla raised $226 million in its 2010 IPO at a market value of about $1.6 billion. It is now the world’s most valuable automaker, worth more than $1.3 trillion.

But even that track record and investor appeal may not be enough in today’s IPO market, analysts cautioned. “We don’t believe that SpaceX can escape the realities of the U.S. IPO marketplace, in the sense that it has become a buyer’s market,” said Josef Schuster, CEO of IPO research firm IPOX.

“Even strong IPO candidates in hot sectors need to show flexibility in pricing their deal and potentially need to price downward for IPO success.”

Others warned that a wave of large listings could strain investor demand more broadly, particularly if multiple mega deals hit the market at the same time.

“There is an old market saying that bull markets end when the money runs out, and there are plenty of historic examples where a deluge of IPOs and new stock market entrants, and then subsequent secondary offerings, meant sellers eventually swamped buyers,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Dawn Kopecki, Noor Zainab Hussain and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)