Tech Sits Out the IPO Rush As Biotech and Healthcare Stocks Flock to Go Public
With the stock market hitting new record highs, there’s been a recent burst of IPO filings arriving on the SEC’s desk, but it’s not the technology startups that many investors are used to seeing waiting to go public. Instead, they’ve been mostly from companies in biotech and other sectors. And all issuers are in the looming shadow of the expected massive stock market launch of SpaceX shares.
So far in 2026, there have been 79 IPO filings in the United States, with 41 pricings of at least $50 million in market cap, according to Renaissance Capital. For some companies looking to go public, the market’s overall tenor has been encouraging. Last week, stock investors drove the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to all-time highs, bolstered by stabilizing macro conditions and lower volatility.
Recent IPOs with share prices that have held up appear to be reassuring other aspiring issuers, according to Michael Ewens, a professor of finance at Columbia Business School: “There are people saying, ‘OK, we’re good now.’ There’s a little bit of a cascading effect. A couple of firms issued, and bankers got excited. Other firms are like, ‘OK, this is working.’”
Kailera Therapeutics, an obesity drug developer backed by Atlas Venture and Bain Capital Life Sciences, just raised $625 million in an upsized IPO. Other companies that put IPO plans in motion this month include Odyssey Therapeutics and Mobia Medical. Amazon-backed nuclear energy company X-Energy is slated to begin trading on Friday.
With many investors waiting on the massive SpaceX IPO expected this summer, smaller issuers are watching the market. “If you’re a smaller issuer, you want to get out before that truck comes through,” says Steve Brotman, managing partner of late-stage investment firm Alpha Partners. “No one knows how much money is going to be left on the table. We’re talking about the biggest IPOs in the history of mankind.”
However, there have not been many recent notable instances of sizable VC-backed tech companies prepping IPOs. Those top tech companies may have valuations “too high to find support in the [stock] market on money-losing business models,” says Kyle Stanford, PitchBook’s director of US venture capital research. “Even tech companies that have been profitable while going public recently haven’t fared too well. That, alongside the wait to see how SpaceX does, is keeping new listings in the biotech and healthcare space, or PE-backed mature companies.”
Some say SpaceX could open the door to continued strength in the IPO market. “If SpaceX goes [sustainably] well, I would expect to see other tech companies—perhaps AI companies beyond the mega-caps—attempt to take advantage of a market perceived to be friendly,” says Lisa Buyer, co-founder of IPO adviser Class V Group. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are projected to deliver the largest year for IPOs in history in terms of proceeds raised, potentially generating more exit value than every VC-backed IPO since 2000 combined.
Others say issuers are focused more on their own dynamics than SpaceX’s plans. “There is so much speculation and fluff around SpaceX … that I don’t think any potential issuers are really altering plans around that,” Buyer says. “Instead, it’s the performance of the market in general and the overall growth of the individual companies that will determine if or when they actually flip to public.”
