SPACs regain favor as blockbuster IPOs crowd the market

A flood of blockbuster IPOs is pushing SPACs back into the conversation on Wall Street. With SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI crowding the 2026 public-markets calendar, bankers and sponsors are once again treating the blank-check route as a practical alternative for companies that cannot win enough attention in a traditional listing.

The pressure point is visibility. SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June went smoothly and its flotation dwarfed the previous largest U.S. exchange listing by nearly three times, a sign of how much bandwidth a single giant deal can consume. SpaceX is also looking to raise more than $25 billion in a 2026 IPO and could be valued above $1 trillion, which helps explain why smaller issuers may decide the window is too crowded to fight for.

For Goldman Sachs, that shifts the day-to-day capital-markets menu. When the IPO line gets long, issuers reassess timing, structure and even whether to go public at all. That can pull more work toward equity capital markets, SPAC advisory, legal structuring and the broader financing conversation that sits between public and private markets. Goldman said in its 2026 outlook that it expects a rise in IPOs and dealmaking, and its 2025 annual report described a Capital Solutions Group built to provide financing, origination, structuring and risk management across public and private markets. In practice, that means more coordination between bankers pitching a straight IPO, a delayed process, a direct listing or a SPAC merger, depending on what the client needs.

The revival is also a reminder that SPACs never disappeared so much as receded. Goldman was already discussing their momentum in early 2021 as an alternative path for raising money in public markets, and the regulatory backdrop is tougher now than it was during the boom years. The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final SPAC rules on January 24, 2024 to strengthen disclosures and investor protections in SPAC IPOs and de-SPAC transactions, so any comeback will unfold under more scrutiny and more paperwork than the last cycle.

That matters inside Goldman because the work is not just about getting a deal done. It is about reading when a crowded issuance calendar is a temporary release valve for supply, and when it signals a more durable shift in how companies want to access capital. S&P Global said 2025 SPAC volumes surged 167% from the prior year and made up 41% of total IPOs, the highest share since 2022, suggesting the rebound was already underway before the latest mega-IPO wave. For bankers, the question now is whether SPACs are a tactical workaround for a jammed market or the start of a longer reset in issuance strategy.