Anthropic is preparing to raise up to $100 billion in an initial public offering that could come as soon as September or October, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is being marketed to investors now alongside a bevy of smaller listings. Combined with the current IPO haul, the year will easily top the current record of roughly $156 billion raised in 2021, according to Dealogic data.
Oura, the maker of fitness-tracking rings popular among financial executives, is weighing a September or October offering after filing its paperwork in May and is expected to fetch a valuation well above the $11 billion level from a funding round last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Switch, a data-center operator, and SB Energy, a SoftBank-backed developer of data centers and a power supplier to them, are both meeting with investors in anticipation of offerings later this year, some of the people said. SB Energy has used its recent investor meetings to highlight an Ohio data-center agreement with OpenAI that the two companies signed earlier this month after weeks of negotiations. Nscale, a cloud computing company, is also meeting with prospective investors, the people said. Inspire Brands, whose restaurant portfolio includes Dunkin’ and Arby’s, is looking at an offering as early as the end of this year, though the timing could slip into early 2027, some people familiar with the matter said. Inspire is backed by the private-equity firm Roark Capital Group. The recent choppy stock performance of comparable companies including Jersey Mike’s — which Blackstone took public in late July — might prompt Inspire to go public at a lower valuation than some of its investors had initially hoped. The five companies are expected to collectively raise billions of dollars, though the IPO market remains dependent on market conditions and there are no guarantees the companies will proceed as planned.
The U.S. IPO market is already on track for a record year after SpaceX raised $86 billion in its June offering. Traditional U.S. offerings have raised $137 billion so far in 2026, according to Dealogic, putting the year on pace to surpass the prior record of roughly $156 billion set in 2021. Companies that went public in 2026 are trading up 21% on average from their IPO prices, according to Dealogic — a contrast to the 2021 class of IPOs, which still trades below offer prices on average. SpaceX’s historic offering went smoothly despite its size, emboldening many companies to push forward with IPOs in the second half of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. SpaceX’s stock has since fallen below its IPO price and is now trading near the level where it initially sold shares, which has not deterred companies, their backers, or their advisers from proceeding with offerings. Investors say they have not seen such a rush to public markets since 2021, when money flooded into newly listed companies ranging from Robinhood to Rivian. The fundraising bonanza that year ended poorly for the majority of new issues. By the end of 2021, two-thirds of the companies that went public in the U.S. were trading below their IPO prices, and the class of 2021 IPOs still trades below IPO prices on average.
Other companies could opt to hold their debuts until next year. Vantage Data Centers, a large data-center developer and operator backed by Silver Lake and DigitalBridge Group, is thinking about a 2027 offering, people familiar with the matter said. OpenAI, Anthropic’s chief rival, has been considering a 2026 listing, though some people familiar with the matter said it could be pushed until 2027. OpenAI recently told investors its revenue grew by 18% from the first to the second quarter while its losses deepened, and that its growth rate has picked up since the launch of a new set of models in July.