Nasdaq raises $129B from new listings in first half of 2026

Nasdaq pulled in $129.3 billion from new listings in the first six months of 2026, cementing its position as the dominant venue for large-scale public capital raises in the US.

That figure contributed to a broader US equity issuance total of $251 billion through late June, surpassing the previous record set during the 2021 bull market.

The two deals that moved the needle

Two offerings did the heavy lifting. SpaceX made its long-anticipated Nasdaq debut under the ticker SPCX, pricing at $135 per share and raising roughly $86 billion after exercising the greenshoe option. The deal valued SpaceX at over $2 trillion, making it one of the largest public offerings in market history.

Alphabet ran alongside it, raising $85 billion in a separate equity offering tied to its artificial intelligence buildout.

Together, those two deals account for the majority of Nasdaq’s $129.3 billion haul. The math is straightforward: remove SpaceX and Alphabet, and you still have a healthy IPO market. Include them, and you have a record.

Why this moment matters beyond the headline numbers

For comparison, Nasdaq hosted 142 IPOs that raised $19.2 billion across the entire first half of 2025. The jump to $129.3 billion in the same period a year later reflects both the size of the anchor deals and a genuine shift in appetite for new public offerings.

CoinShares, Europe’s largest digital asset manager with over $6 billion in assets under management, began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker CSHR on April 1, 2026, through a business combination. It represents the crypto-adjacent corner of this IPO wave, though the broader digital asset sector has not produced a major native listing to rival the tech and infrastructure deals dominating the scoreboard.

The 2021 cycle saw crypto companies flood toward public listings, from Coinbase’s direct listing to a wave of blockchain-adjacent SPACs. So far in 2026, the standout names are a rocket company and a search giant, not a crypto exchange or a DeFi protocol.

What investors should watch from here

The SpaceX listing introduces a new mega-cap into the index universe, which means passive funds will eventually need to hold it. That kind of forced buying can support the stock post-listing, but it also reshapes portfolio allocations across the board as index weights shift.

Alphabet’s $85 billion equity raise funds AI infrastructure through public capital rather than internal cash flow alone, which tells you something about the size of the bet it’s making.

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