Just when the market was starting to act like it could possibly go five minutes without a fresh identity crisis, here come the IPO rumors. SpaceX could hit in June. OpenAI is reportedly eyeing September. Anthropic is aiming for later in 2026.
Naturally, this has people reaching for dot-com comparisons. Wall Street hears “multiple hot deals” and immediately starts acting like a guy who found his Y2K bunker supplies.
Goldman Sachs is projecting about $600 billion in U.S. equity issuance in 2026. Big number. Stack it against the total size of the U.S. stock market, however, and it looks less like 1999 and more like a market that can probably absorb it.
The index crowd can see where all this is headed. FTSE Russell and Nasdaq have already put fast-track rules in place that can move new mega-caps into major indexes within days (instead of months). S&P is kicking the tires on similar changes.
But headline valuation isn’t the same as investable size. Index providers use float-adjusted market cap. Only the shares that actually trade count, not the giant top-line number everyone slaps into a chart. If a company goes public with a relatively tight float, passive funds don’t need to buy the whole fantasy. They buy what trades.
Take SpaceX. Even with an eye-watering valuation, a limited float means the amount passive money would need to put to work is much smaller than the headline suggests. The ripple effect people worry about (passive funds dumping existing index names left and right to make room) looks a lot smaller after doing the math.
This is still a big deal. Fast index inclusion rules mean passive investors could pick up exposure sooner than expected. And when a company goes public with this much hype around it, even routine trading starts to feel like an event. But big isn’t the same as destabilizing. And for now, the mechanics point the calmer way.
So yes, keep an eye on the pipeline. Watch the float. Watch how the indexes handle it. Then look at how much stock actually trades, not just how much mythology gets baked into the valuation.
If all three actually do come public in close formation, expect a week of news coverage that sounds like the financial media found the espresso machine and lost adult supervision. The market impact may be less dramatic. The headlines won’t be.
Source: Goldman Sachs