Quick Facts
- SpaceX and Cerebras claimed 89% of the $90 billion raised in U.S. venture-backed tech IPOs so far in 2026.
- No venture-backed SaaS unicorn has submitted a new IPO filing in 2026, as software stocks have shed $2 trillion in market cap over the past 12 months.
- Gartner projects agentic AI will disrupt up to $234 billion in enterprise application software spending through 2030.
U.S. venture-backed technology companies have raised nearly $90 billion in domestic public offerings in 2026, putting the year on pace for the second-highest annual tally on record. That number tells almost nothing about the health of the IPO market for most tech companies.
SpaceX accounted for 83% of that total after pricing its historic June 12 IPO at $135 per share, raising approximately $75 billion at a valuation approaching $1.8 trillion. AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems added another 6%, with shares jumping nearly 70% on their debut day and pushing its market cap to roughly $95 billion. Cerebras reported core cloud revenue up 287% in its second quarter, with OpenAI and Amazon among its top customers.
Strip out those two companies, and the IPO market for tech looks thin.
SaaS Hits a Wall
For software companies, 2026 has been the worst stretch in recent memory. According to Crunchbase data, not a single venture-backed SaaS unicorn submitted a new IPO filing this year. Software stocks have lost $2 trillion in market cap over the past 12 months. Salesforce is down 30%. Workday is down 33%.
The damage runs deeper among recent entrants. Figma went public last July at $33 per share, briefly traded near $143, and now sits around $24 — down more than 80% from its high and roughly 25% below its IPO price, despite growing revenue 40% year-over-year. Navan priced at $25 in October and has since fallen to around $10.20, a 60% decline in under four months.
HubSpot, Atlassian, and Figma each crashed 70% to 80% from their 52-week highs by mid-April, putting all three on pace for the worst drawdowns in their public histories. On a single Tuesday earlier this year, roughly $300 billion in market value evaporated across SaaS, data, and software-heavy investment firms — triggered not by an earnings miss or a macro shock, but by an AI product release.
The Per-Seat Model Is Dying
The pressure on software valuations is structural. Companies are asking why they should pay for 100 software licenses when AI agents can perform the same work at a fraction of the cost. That question is reshaping how enterprise software gets bought and priced.
The per-seat model that powered SaaS growth for two decades is giving way to outcome-based pricing, where customers pay for completed tasks rather than software access. The shift is punishing companies built around user count as the primary revenue driver.
Gartner now projects that agentic AI will disrupt up to $234 billion in enterprise application software spending through 2030, with 20% of enterprise SaaS spending by that year directly tied to price adjustments driven by this shift. The “Rule of 40” — the longstanding benchmark requiring a company’s combined growth rate and profit margin to exceed 40% — is losing its grip as a reliable valuation signal in this environment.
Where the Money Is Going
The pattern that has emerged in 2026 is direct. Consumption-priced infrastructure that AI workloads depend on is attracting capital. Seat-priced application software that AI can replace is not.
Outside of SpaceX and Cerebras, energy and defense companies have drawn the most IPO interest. Texas-based geothermal company Fervo Energy raised $1.89 billion, the largest renewable energy IPO on record. Total U.S. IPO proceeds rose sharply in the first half of 2026, driven largely by these non-software sectors.
Anthropic may soon reset the record books entirely. The company behind the Claude family of large language models confidentially submitted a draft S-1 with the SEC on June 1, 2026, following a $65 billion Series H round at a $965 billion post-money valuation. Bloomberg reported Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate has surpassed $65 billion, up more than 7x from end-of-2025 levels. Investors are targeting a $2 trillion IPO valuation, which would surpass SpaceX’s listing as the largest in history. The company has also reported positive adjusted operating income, reversing a roughly $5.6 billion loss posted in 2024.
For founders watching the market, the takeaway is clear. Capital is moving toward companies that AI needs, not companies that AI competes with.
Read more: A Hard Year For Software IPOs