Wall Street’s IPO Drought: Everyone Is Waiting for Anthropic
Trending Topics Jakob Steinschaden ● Covered by 12 sources
Wall Street’s IPO pipeline has dried up as companies wait for Anthropic. Big A.I. listings are crowding out everyone else, and even strong markets aren’t luring them out.
Based on reporting by Trending Topics, Jakob Steinschaden — read the original for the full story.
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Wall Street was supposed to be having a bumper year for listings. Instead, the pipeline has gone almost quiet, with companies shelving plans one after another and bankers watching the calendar turn up empty. The problem isn’t just caution. It’s attention. Investors keep circling one name above all the others: Anthropic.
That pull is strong enough that some would-be issuers are holding back because they don’t think they can get noticed beside an A.I. giant. Renaissance Capital says there isn’t a single U.S. IPO scheduled for the coming week. Even the possible next names are tentative, with British data center operator Nscale among the few still in view.
The list of delays keeps getting longer. EG Group has pushed its New York plan into 2027 after aiming to raise about $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation. Oura has shelved its listing for now, blaming “uncertainty in the IPO market.” SB Energy, backed by SoftBank, was targeting about $50 billion despite not having a facility in operation. Holtec and Bamboo Insurance have also paused their plans.
The two headline A.I. deals are moving, but slowly. Anthropic is now expected to go public in mid-November, after the U.S. midterm elections, with backers hoping for a valuation above $2 trillion. OpenAI has pushed its own IPO to 2027. And while bankers have had a strong year, helped by SpaceX’s June listing and its record $86 billion raise, the mood has changed fast. Smaller deals are running into skepticism over lofty A.I.-linked valuations, and the first day of trading has become the first warning sign. This year’s tech listings are averaging about 23 percent below their debut price, according to BCA Research.
The strangest part is that the market backdrop is not terrible. The S&P 500 is near a record high, the Vix is low, and the Nasdaq just hit a record. Yet companies are still waiting. The caution has spread beyond the U.S. too, with delays in Europe, London and Asia. Global IPO numbers look healthy on paper, but the recovery still feels narrow, driven by a few huge deals rather than a broad return of confidence.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when every company wants to be priced like the future and nobody wants to be the sucker buying the first ticket. The market isn’t broken; it’s just being picky, which is a lot less flattering for the A.I. crowd. Wall Street loves a boom until it has to do the price discovery part.
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