US IPOs and share sales hit record $251B at midyear, fueled by SpaceX’s historic listing
The largest IPO in history helped push traditional equity markets to unprecedented heights, leaving crypto watching from the sidelines.
Traditional equity markets just posted a number that makes most crypto rallies look quaint. US IPOs and share sales reached a record $251B through the first half of 2026, according to Bloomberg-compiled data, a figure that excludes SPACs and other investment vehicles.
The single biggest driver of that total: SpaceX’s IPO, which raised $86.2B on its own and claimed the title of largest initial public offering in history. That one listing accounted for more than a third of all midyear proceeds.
The numbers in context
To appreciate how extraordinary that $251B figure is, consider that Goldman Sachs had previously projected full-year US IPO proceeds for 2026 at roughly $160B. The market blew past that forecast before July even arrived.
SpaceX’s $86.2B raise is the kind of number that warps the entire dataset. For perspective, the previous largest US IPO, Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing on the Tadawul, raised about $25.6B. SpaceX didn’t just break that record. It obliterated it by more than three times over.
Even stripping out SpaceX, the remaining $165B or so in equity issuance still represents a remarkably strong half-year.
What this means for crypto investors
The $251B record contains exactly zero dollars from cryptocurrency or digital asset offerings. Not a single crypto-native company appears to have contributed meaningfully to this milestone.
Investors watching this space should pay attention to whether the second half of 2026 sustains this pace. Goldman’s now-surpassed $160B projection for the full year means the market is running at roughly 157% of what the bank expected.