The IPO market in 2026 has raised more money than any year since 2021 and yet sold fewer companies than it did last year. Through mid-September, 107 deals had priced on U.S. exchanges, down about 30 percent from the same point in 2025, while proceeds came to $145.9 billion, more than four times last year's pace, according to Renaissance Capital. 

This is, of course, the SpaceX (SPCX: Nasdaq) effect: that one-deal raised $86.2 billion in June, the largest offering ever. Take it out and the year looks ordinary.

But what’s next? Nothing ordinary, to be sure. 

To answer that question – as we expand our IPO coverage (more on that soon) –  we thought it’d be useful to create our own ranked list of private companies most likely to go public soon. We’re pulling from published lists across the IPO marketplace, interviews with VCs and bankers and ranking against  a company’s English Wikipedia page over the past 30 days, bot traffic filtered out — a rough read on public attention.

We standardize the spelling of each company name, then cut anyone who has filed a public S-1 or priced a deal. We’ve been tracking these names since July (tip of the hat to the great Spencer Cadigan), getting ready for this first edition and showing how some names are rising and falling in our list. 

Our early prediction: surprises are in order!

This was an important hit with Connell McShane on NewsNation, not just talking about solving alignment for superintelligence but talking about what just changed. Our new understanding of the OpenAI attack on HuggingFace has caused me to change my mind on what remedy is needed.

WATCH THE NEWSNATION HIT HERE →

In New York and Los Angeles this week. I’m available for interviews, background or client calls — and yes, briefing clients and preparing for IPO filing from Anthropic!

Written reports are available to clients, our IPO reports (dubbed “The Quiet Period”) for $5,000. Video summaries on YouTube, and of course our popular summaries of the summaries on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

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