The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026

SpaceX's IPO alone is worth more than every IPO that happened during the entire year 2000 — and Anthropic and OpenAI are still to come.

Jun 15, 2026 18:30 Difficulty: Beginner Played

TL;DR

The 2026 IPO market is shaping up to be the biggest in history, with SpaceX already debuting at a $1.77 trillion valuation and Anthropic and OpenAI set to follow. WSJ investing columnist Spencer Jakab breaks down why companies are rushing to go public now — peak AI excitement — and why that timing should give ordinary investors pause. The single most useful takeaway: companies entering at trillion-dollar valuations simply can't deliver the 100x returns that early Apple or Amazon investors enjoyed.

#AI IPOs #tech valuations #market concentration #passive investing risk #AI infrastructure spending #dot-com comparison #retail investor FOMO #IPO timing strategy #S&P 500 concentration #Joe Kennedy shoeshine anecdote #IPO #SpaceX #OpenAI #Anthropic #AI #stock market #valuation #tech bubble #index funds #retail investors #S&P 500 #Wall Street #FOMO #tech stocks

2026 is shaping up to be the biggest IPO year in history, led by SpaceX's record-breaking debut and imminent offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. WSJ investing columnist Spencer Jakab explains the dynamics driving the frenzy and the risks lurking behind the hype.

Chapter list
  • The episode opens with a barrage of news audio announcing SpaceX's record debut, with anchors breathlessly noting a $2 trillion-plus valuation 'with a T.' Spencer Jakab, The Wall Street Journal's investing columnist, immediately anchors the scale: SpaceX's single offering exceeds the combined total of every IPO that happened during the year 2000, the peak of the dot-com frenzy. Anthropic and OpenAI are both lined up to follow, targeting valuations around $1 trillion or more. The scene-setting is deliberate — host Jessica Mendoza is priming listeners to understand not just the numbers but the historical gravity of what is unfolding on Wall Street.

  • After the rapid-fire news montage, Jessica Mendoza introduces The Journal in its standard format, identifying herself as host and flagging the date — Monday, June 15th. The brief transition signals a shift from raw headline energy to analytical depth, preparing listeners for Spencer Jakab's more measured, historically grounded take on the IPO bonanza ahead.

  • The first sponsor break is presented by Accenture, which promotes a partnership with Spotify aimed at reinventing advertising operations through automation, smarter workflows, and better data integration. The message targets the advertising and media business audience, positioning Accenture as the technology and consulting partner enabling Spotify to connect brands more efficiently with audiences.

  • The second sponsor segment is a pharmaceutical read for Tremfya, a prescription medicine for adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The extended ad covers dosing options (self-injection or intravenous infusion), required safety warnings about infection risk and liver problems, and a call to action to ask a doctor or visit tremfyradio.com. Standard US pharmaceutical advertising requirements dictate the length and specificity of the safety disclosures.

  • Audio from retail investors declaring they've bought SpaceX shares and 'will never sell' sets the tone before Spencer Jakab's cool-headed assessment kicks in. His verdict: the IPO lived up to its extraordinary hype. The company was valued above $2 trillion at various points during the day, briefly ranking as the 6th or 7th most valuable company in the United States or 7th or 8th globally. Jakab assigns it an A or A+ — the stock went up, and a strong debut by SpaceX is good news for the AI-related IPOs queuing behind it. The investor excitement reflects Elon Musk's visionary pitch: AI data centers in orbit, a human colony on Mars, a company that feels like it belongs in a science-fiction novel made real.

  • The two largest AI companies in the world are planning to go public as soon as this fall, but no one knows yet who will move first. Spencer Jakab frames it as a true competitive race, not just a scheduling quirk: the company that goes public first in a bull market captures peak enthusiasm and raises the most money at the highest valuation, gaining the largest war chest for the coming competitive battle. But the stakes cut both ways. If Company A underperforms, it poisons the well for Company B, making it far harder to raise capital at an ambitious valuation. If Company A exceeds expectations, it stokes demand and inflates confidence in what follows. The strategic choice of when to IPO is itself a competitive weapon.

  • Spencer Jakab is not dismissive of the technology itself: ChatGPT and Claude have genuinely amazed users, advancing so rapidly that he compares AI's progress to a child jumping from kindergarten to high school. But impressive products do not automatically make for profitable businesses. The fundamental problem is that AI infrastructure costs far more to build and run than these companies currently charge customers — and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is profitable. Jakab uses the word 'flaky' deliberately, and it lands hard. The scale of the investment commitment makes the risk even more acute: when all promised AI infrastructure spend is tallied, Jakab estimates it exceeds the internet, railroads, and even the Apollo moon programme, approaching the economic scale of World War II. For that level of spending to pay off, revenue must grow at a pace no company in history has ever managed.

  • The mid-episode sponsor break features Optum, a healthcare company positioning itself as the solution to a fragmented healthcare system. The read highlights pain points listeners will recognise — waiting on prescription refills, difficulty scheduling appointments — and presents Optum's technology-and-data integration model as the fix, promising cheaper prescriptions, connected care, and a holistic patient view. Listeners are directed to business.optum.com.

  • Jessica Mendoza and Spencer Jakab pivot to the systemic risk hiding behind the IPO excitement. The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 are all technology firms, and they collectively account for nearly 40% of the index's total value. What makes 2026 uniquely dangerous, Jakab argues, is that every single one of those ten companies has an AI angle — Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Broadcom — creating a concentration around one single theme that not even the dot-com bubble matched. History offers a sobering pattern: every major technology mania, from railroads to radio to the internet, began with something real and transformative. But of the companies that rushed in early, only 1 to 3 ultimately made serious money for investors. Amazon is the exception that proved the rule; Pets.com is the rule itself.

  • Spencer Jakab broadens the risk picture from sophisticated investors to ordinary Americans. Stock market wealth now accounts for a historically unprecedented share of Americans' total net worth, meaning a major correction would affect household spending plans, retirement timelines, and feelings of financial security at an unusual scale. The danger is compounded for passive investors: millions of Americans using 401(k)s and IRAs to hold index funds believe they are being cautious. But as the AI IPOs join major US indexes, those funds will automatically buy in at enormous scale — turning conservative retirement savers into reluctant holders of untested, unprofitable AI companies. The 'set it and forget it' approach, Jakab notes, is no longer the safe harbour it once was.

  • To articulate the market-top question without pretending he can answer it, Spencer Jakab turns to one of Wall Street's most enduring stories. Joe Kennedy, the Kennedy family patriarch and once one of the richest men in America, famously avoided the Great Crash of 1929 by selling his stock holdings after a shoeshine boy began offering him tips. Kennedy's reasoning was elegant: if a shoeshine boy knows as much as I do — and has been right — something is wrong with the market. Jakab draws the parallel explicitly to today's retail AI enthusiasm, noting that ordinary investors who buy into hot themes online and have been right for a while create the same uneasy signal. He is careful to add that bull markets produce many false alarms; plenty of smart people have called the top too early. But the anecdote itself is the point: the question deserves to be asked.

  • Jessica Mendoza puts the direct question to Spencer Jakab: is this IPO frenzy an opportunity or a risk? His answer is careful and devastating in equal measure. The companies are real and AI is a real technology, so outright dismissal would be wrong. But the mathematics of extraordinary returns no longer apply. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix generated life-changing wealth because they went public as small, underestimated companies — investors could make 100 times their money. You simply cannot do that with a company already worth $1.75 trillion. The best realistic outcome is a doubling, which many far less exciting growth stocks can also provide with more certainty. Jakab's closing line is the sharpest in the episode: future historians may look back and conclude that these companies 'got away with murder' — raising an ungodly amount of money at peak hype before proving they could sustain real profits.

  • Jessica Mendoza signs off by directing listeners to Spencer Jakab's Markets AM newsletter in the show notes, and reminds audiences that The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal available every weekday afternoon. The episode closes with a Ryan Reynolds voice spot for Mint Mobile, offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month — a plan he notes he cannot advertise with custom $15 bills, as that would be 'very illegal.'

IPO (Initial Public Offering)
The first time a private company sells shares to the general public on a stock exchange, allowing it to raise capital from outside investors.
War chest
A reserve of capital a company accumulates to fund future growth, acquisitions, or competitive battles; here, the funds raised in an IPO.
S&P 500
A stock market index tracking the 500 largest publicly traded US companies, widely used as a benchmark for overall US market performance.
Index fund
A type of investment fund that passively replicates the composition of a market index (e.g. the Nasdaq 100), rather than actively picking stocks.
Nasdaq 100
A stock index comprising the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange, heavily weighted toward technology.
Market cap (market capitalisation)
The total market value of a company's outstanding shares; calculated by multiplying share price by total shares outstanding.
401(k)
A US employer-sponsored retirement savings account that allows employees to invest pre-tax earnings, often in index funds tied to major stock indexes.
IRA (Individual Retirement Account)
A US personal retirement savings account with tax advantages, commonly invested in mutual funds or index funds tracking major US markets.
FOMO
Fear Of Missing Out; in investing, the anxiety that drives retail investors to buy into a hot asset class to avoid being left behind if it surges further.
Dot-com bubble
The speculative boom in internet companies in the late 1990s that peaked in 2000 and subsequently collapsed, wiping out many early investors.
Bull market
A sustained period of rising stock prices, typically defined as a 20%+ gain from a recent low, often accompanied by high investor optimism.
Retail investor
An individual non-professional investor who buys and sells securities for personal accounts, as opposed to institutional investors like pension funds or hedge funds.
Valuation
An estimate of a company's total worth, often expressed as a multiple of revenue or earnings; for pre-profit companies, largely driven by growth expectations.
Mania
In financial markets, a period of irrational exuberance where asset prices far exceed fundamental values, driven by collective excitement rather than earnings.
Bonanza
A source of sudden, great wealth or luck; used here to describe an exceptionally lucrative IPO market environment.
Ungodly
Used colloquially to mean shockingly large or excessive; Jakab uses it to convey that the capital raised by AI IPOs is beyond any reasonable expectation.

Chapter 1 · 00:00

Cold Open: The IPO Headlines Everyone Is Talking About

The episode opens with a barrage of news audio announcing SpaceX's record debut, with anchors breathlessly noting a $2 trillion-plus valuation 'with a T.' Spencer Jakab, The Wall Street Journal's investing columnist, immediately anchors the scale: SpaceX's single offering exceeds the combined total of every IPO that happened during the year 2000, the peak of the dot-com frenzy. Anthropic and OpenAI are both lined up to follow, targeting valuations around $1 trillion or more. The scene-setting is deliberate — host Jessica Mendoza is priming listeners to understand not just the numbers but the historical gravity of what is unfolding on Wall Street.

Business
The Biggest IPO Year in History

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

SpaceX's IPO alone raised more than every single IPO that happened during the dot-com peak of 2000. Add Anthropic and OpenAI — both targeting trillion-dollar-plus valuations — and 2026 is unquestionably the biggest IPO year ever recorded.

Business
Why Now? Peak AI Excitement Is the Window

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

OpenAI and Anthropic aren't going public because they've cracked profitability. They're going public because the excitement window is open right now, and waiting risks that window closing. You raise the most money when people are willing to pay the most.

Chapter 5 · 04:07

SpaceX's Blockbuster IPO Debut

Audio from retail investors declaring they've bought SpaceX shares and 'will never sell' sets the tone before Spencer Jakab's cool-headed assessment kicks in. His verdict: the IPO lived up to its extraordinary hype. The company was valued above $2 trillion at various points during the day, briefly ranking as the 6th or 7th most valuable company in the United States or 7th or 8th globally. Jakab assigns it an A or A+ — the stock went up, and a strong debut by SpaceX is good news for the AI-related IPOs queuing behind it. The investor excitement reflects Elon Musk's visionary pitch: AI data centers in orbit, a human colony on Mars, a company that feels like it belongs in a science-fiction novel made real.

Business
SpaceX's IPO Debut: An A+

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

SpaceX's IPO lived up to the hype. The stock traded higher, briefly valuing the company above $2 trillion and landing it among the 6th or 7th most valuable companies in the world. A strong debut bodes well for Anthropic and OpenAI's upcoming offerings.

Business
OpenAI vs. Anthropic: A Race to the Market

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

It's a genuine race. Whichever of OpenAI or Anthropic goes public first sets the benchmark: a strong debut inflates enthusiasm for the other; a weak one poisons the well. First-mover advantage here isn't just bragging rights — it's billions of dollars.

Chapter 6 · 05:35

The IPO Race: OpenAI vs. Anthropic

The two largest AI companies in the world are planning to go public as soon as this fall, but no one knows yet who will move first. Spencer Jakab frames it as a true competitive race, not just a scheduling quirk: the company that goes public first in a bull market captures peak enthusiasm and raises the most money at the highest valuation, gaining the largest war chest for the coming competitive battle. But the stakes cut both ways. If Company A underperforms, it poisons the well for Company B, making it far harder to raise capital at an ambitious valuation. If Company A exceeds expectations, it stokes demand and inflates confidence in what follows. The strategic choice of when to IPO is itself a competitive weapon.

Business
Flaky Business Plans at Trillion-Dollar Valuations

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

The products are impressive — ChatGPT and Claude have genuinely amazed users. But the underlying economics are fragile: these companies spend far more on infrastructure than they collect in revenue, and neither is profitable. Spencer Jakab calls that arrangement 'flaky' — and he means it.

Chapter 7 · 07:30

The Business Case: Promising But Flaky

Spencer Jakab is not dismissive of the technology itself: ChatGPT and Claude have genuinely amazed users, advancing so rapidly that he compares AI's progress to a child jumping from kindergarten to high school. But impressive products do not automatically make for profitable businesses. The fundamental problem is that AI infrastructure costs far more to build and run than these companies currently charge customers — and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is profitable. Jakab uses the word 'flaky' deliberately, and it lands hard. The scale of the investment commitment makes the risk even more acute: when all promised AI infrastructure spend is tallied, Jakab estimates it exceeds the internet, railroads, and even the Apollo moon programme, approaching the economic scale of World War II. For that level of spending to pay off, revenue must grow at a pace no company in history has ever managed.

Technology
AI Investment Approaches World War II Scale

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Technology

When all the AI infrastructure commitments are counted up, the total surpasses every major technology buildout in history — the internet, railroads, even the Apollo program. Spencer Jakab's jaw-dropping benchmark: we're approaching the economic scale of World War II.

Chapter 9 · 10:59

The Risk Hidden in Plain Sight: Market Concentration

Jessica Mendoza and Spencer Jakab pivot to the systemic risk hiding behind the IPO excitement. The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 are all technology firms, and they collectively account for nearly 40% of the index's total value. What makes 2026 uniquely dangerous, Jakab argues, is that every single one of those ten companies has an AI angle — Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Broadcom — creating a concentration around one single theme that not even the dot-com bubble matched. History offers a sobering pattern: every major technology mania, from railroads to radio to the internet, began with something real and transformative. But of the companies that rushed in early, only 1 to 3 ultimately made serious money for investors. Amazon is the exception that proved the rule; Pets.com is the rule itself.

Business
Tech Concentration: All Big Companies Ride on AI

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

The S&P 500's top 10 companies account for nearly 40% of the index — and every single one of them has an AI angle. That's a level of concentration around a single theme that not even the dot-com bubble achieved. If AI disappoints, there is no diversification hiding in the index.

Business
Index Fund Investors: Unknowingly All-In on AI

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

Passive index investing used to mean balanced exposure across banks, oil, manufacturers. Now it means heavy concentration in tech — and after the AI IPOs, ordinary retirement savers will be automatically exposed to unprofitable, unproven AI companies whether they chose that risk or not.

Chapter 10 · 13:30

Ordinary Investors Are More Exposed Than They Know

Spencer Jakab broadens the risk picture from sophisticated investors to ordinary Americans. Stock market wealth now accounts for a historically unprecedented share of Americans' total net worth, meaning a major correction would affect household spending plans, retirement timelines, and feelings of financial security at an unusual scale. The danger is compounded for passive investors: millions of Americans using 401(k)s and IRAs to hold index funds believe they are being cautious. But as the AI IPOs join major US indexes, those funds will automatically buy in at enormous scale — turning conservative retirement savers into reluctant holders of untested, unprofitable AI companies. The 'set it and forget it' approach, Jakab notes, is no longer the safe harbour it once was.

Chapter 11 · 14:44

The Shoeshine Boy Warning

To articulate the market-top question without pretending he can answer it, Spencer Jakab turns to one of Wall Street's most enduring stories. Joe Kennedy, the Kennedy family patriarch and once one of the richest men in America, famously avoided the Great Crash of 1929 by selling his stock holdings after a shoeshine boy began offering him tips. Kennedy's reasoning was elegant: if a shoeshine boy knows as much as I do — and has been right — something is wrong with the market. Jakab draws the parallel explicitly to today's retail AI enthusiasm, noting that ordinary investors who buy into hot themes online and have been right for a while create the same uneasy signal. He is careful to add that bull markets produce many false alarms; plenty of smart people have called the top too early. But the anecdote itself is the point: the question deserves to be asked.

History
The 1929 Shoeshine Boy Warning

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 History

Joe Kennedy made his fortune by selling before the 1929 crash after a shoeshine boy started giving him stock tips. When everyday people become stock market experts, the smart money gets nervous. Spencer Jakab tells this story for a reason: retail AI excitement today looks a lot like 1929.

Chapter 12 · 16:15

Opportunity or Risk? Spencer Jakab's Verdict

Jessica Mendoza puts the direct question to Spencer Jakab: is this IPO frenzy an opportunity or a risk? His answer is careful and devastating in equal measure. The companies are real and AI is a real technology, so outright dismissal would be wrong. But the mathematics of extraordinary returns no longer apply. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix generated life-changing wealth because they went public as small, underestimated companies — investors could make 100 times their money. You simply cannot do that with a company already worth $1.75 trillion. The best realistic outcome is a doubling, which many far less exciting growth stocks can also provide with more certainty. Jakab's closing line is the sharpest in the episode: future historians may look back and conclude that these companies 'got away with murder' — raising an ungodly amount of money at peak hype before proving they could sustain real profits.

Business
Why You Can't Make 100x on a $1.75 Trillion Company

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon created multi-millionaires because they went public as small, underestimated companies. SpaceX entered the market already worth nearly $2 trillion. The ceiling on future returns is structurally lower — the best realistic outcome is a doubling, which any number of less exciting stocks can also deliver.

Business
'They Got Away With Murder'

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

History may record the 2026 AI IPO frenzy as one of the greatest capital extractions ever: companies raising unprecedented sums at peak hype before proving their products can generate sustainable profit. Spencer Jakab doesn't mince words about what that looks like in retrospect.

No indexed bits in this chapter.

Show stoppers

Business
Flaky Business Plans at Trillion-Dollar Valuations

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

The products are impressive — ChatGPT and Claude have genuinely amazed users. But the underlying economics are fragile: these companies spend far more on infrastructure than they collect in revenue, and neither is profitable. Spencer Jakab calls that arrangement 'flaky' — and he means it.

Business
Why You Can't Make 100x on a $1.75 Trillion Company

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 Business

Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon created multi-millionaires because they went public as small, underestimated companies. SpaceX entered the market already worth nearly $2 trillion. The ceiling on future returns is structurally lower — the best realistic outcome is a doubling, which any number of less exciting stocks can also deliver.

History
The 1929 Shoeshine Boy Warning

The Great IPO Frenzy of 2026 · Jun 15, 2026 History

Joe Kennedy made his fortune by selling before the 1929 crash after a shoeshine boy started giving him stock tips. When everyday people become stock market experts, the smart money gets nervous. Spencer Jakab tells this story for a reason: retail AI excitement today looks a lot like 1929.

Snapshots ()

Key Quotes ()

This episode

Claims & Sources

0 / 12 cited (0%)

Factual claims made this episode, and whether a source was named.

SpaceX's IPO is the largest in history, with the company valued above $2 trillion during its first trading day.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

SpaceX's single IPO raised more money than all IPOs combined during the year 2000.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 are all technology companies and together represent nearly 40% of the index's total value.

Jessica Mendoza no source cited

Every one of the top 10 S&P 500 companies has some AI-related angle, including Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Broadcom.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

Total committed AI infrastructure investment is projected to exceed the combined cost of the internet, railroads, and the Apollo moon program, approaching the scale of World War II.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

Stock market wealth has never been a higher share of Americans' net worth than it is currently.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

OpenAI and Anthropic are both planning to go public at valuations around $1 trillion or more later in 2026.

Jessica Mendoza no source cited

Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is currently profitable; both are choosing to IPO because market excitement is high, not because of financial strength.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

In historical technology manias — railroads, radio, the internet — only 1 to 3 early-stage companies ultimately generated significant returns for investors.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

AI IPO companies like SpaceX already valued at $1.75 trillion cannot realistically deliver the 100x returns that early investors in Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon received.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

During the dot-com era, both Amazon and Pets.com had IPOs, but only Amazon became a successful long-term business.

Jessica Mendoza no source cited

Joe Kennedy famously sold his stock holdings after a shoeshine boy gave him stock tips, correctly anticipating the Great Crash of 1929.

Spencer Jakab no source cited

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