SpaceX and the parade of planets, OpenAI is afraid of the competitor: the main thing about IPO by February 1

Elon Musk wants to time the biggest IPO in history to coincide with his birthday and a parade of planets. The developer of ChatGPT has accelerated preparations for the listing for fear that investors' funds will go to a competitor. The European IPO market had its best start of the year. The main events on the IPO market during the week - in our selection.

- Elon Musk wants to launch the SpaceX IPO in mid-June 2026, timed to coincide with a parade of planets and his birthday. According to Financial Times sources, the company may go public during the rare conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury. An additional factor in choosing the timing was the businessman's 55th birthday on June 28. SpaceX expects to raise up to $50 billion at a valuation of about $1.5 trillion. Such an offering would be the largest in history, surpassing the record of oil giant Saudi Aramco, which raised $29 billion in 2019. Musk is also considering joining SpaceX with his startup xAI before the IPO, sources told Reuters.

- OpenAI has accelerated its preparations for an IPO and may hold it in the fourth quarter of 2026, its sources told The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI executives fear rival startup Anthropic will list earlier, they said. Anthropic, whose revenue is growing thanks to the success of its Claude chatbot-based tool for programmers, has already notified partners of a possible listing before the end of this year. Being first to go public would allow OpenAI to skim the cream off the market, taking the bulk of capital from investors who are waiting for an opportunity to invest in artificial intelligence, the WSJ writes.

- Online stock and cryptocurrency trading platform Robinhood Markets may play a major role in the SpaceX IPO. According to Bloomberg's sources, the platform is battling Wall Street banks for the right to acquire a large stake in SpaceX for direct sale to its retail investors. Traditionally, retail investors have played a secondary role in IPOs, where key parameters and prices were determined by institutional buyers prior to public trading. This has begun to change with technology companies such as Robinhood, Airbnb and Uber introducing the practice of reserving shares for users. This approach transforms the established model, giving private clients direct access to securities at the initial public offering stage on a par with large funds, the agency notes.

- US manufacturer of electrical equipment for data centers Forgent Power Solutions intends to raise up to $1.6bn in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. According to the application to the SEC, the company plans to sell 56 million securities in the price range of $25-29, which implies the maximum capitalization of the business at $8.8 billion. The decision to put the company on the exchange is made against the background of high investor demand for securities of companies benefiting from the boom of AI-technologies, states Bloomberg. Forgent Power Solutions plans to determine the offering price on February 4.

- Liftoff Mobile, a mobile app advertising platform controlled by investment giant Blackstone, plans to raise up to $762 million in an IPO on Nasdaq. According to the listing prospectus, the company will float 25.4 million shares in a price range of $26-30, which implies a capitalization of up to $5.2 billion. Liftoff's technological backbone is its proprietary Cortex AI model. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the service's audience reached 1.4 billion daily active users worldwide.

- Brazilian digital bank PicPay, controlled by the billionaire Batista family, has become the first business from Brazil to list on a U.S. exchange in more than four years. The company raised $434 million in its IPO on Nasdaq, selling securities at the top end of its stated range of $19 apiece. The share price was unchanged at the debut trading. The listing was a win for Wesley and Joesley Batista, who retain more than 90% of the voting rights in PicPay. The brothers managed to recover from a corruption scandal in Brazil a decade ago, and their empire now spans meat processing, energy, mining, fintech, media, cosmetics and other sectors in at least 20 countries.

- American York Space Systems, which produces small satellites and spacecraft, has placed on the New York Stock Exchange shares for $629 million. The listing took place at the upper limit of the target range - at $34 per paper. At the end of the debut trades quotations of York Space Systems decreased by 1.2%. The largest customer of the company is the Pentagon. Among its customers are the U.S. Air Force and the Space Systems Development Agency. Since 2012, York Space has completed 74 missions, and its vehicles have worked in orbit for more than 4 million hours.

- Quotes of Austrian Asta Energy Solutions jumped by 46% during the debut trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. At the opening the cost of securities reached € 43 at the IPO price of € 29.5. The manufacturer of copper components for energy equipment raised €165 million on the exchange. Market interest in the offering was fueled by the company's claims that its products contribute to the transition to renewable energy sources. According to Bloomberg, demand for the shares exceeded supply by more than 15 times. Due to the high excitement, most of the investors' requests were not fulfilled.

- Shares of Chinese snack chain Busy Ming soared 88% on the first day of trading after its IPO in Hong Kong. The company placed securities for HK$3.67 billion ($470 million). Demand from retail investors during the bookbuild exceeded the 1,900 times the amount of shares offered. Hong Kong market began 2026 with records: the volume of funds raised at the January IPO may become the maximum in history for this month, writes Bloomberg. The main driver of activity - deals of companies related to AI. In the consumer sector, pork producer Muyuan Foods and energy producer Eastroc Beverage are also preparing to list.

- Latvian national airline Air Baltic is looking for consultants to sell a share of the business to strategic investors, Bloomberg reported. The carrier is forced to look for alternatives to IPO, which was postponed until 2026. An Air Baltic spokesman said the government has instructed the company to consider options for raising private capital outside the stock exchange. Now the state owns a controlling stake, and another 10% of shares is owned by German Lufthansa. The company's development is hampered by technical problems and high debt load on bonds. The closure of a number of routes due to the conflict in Ukraine also had a negative impact. Against this background, Fitch downgraded Air Baltic's credit rating to pre-default in December 2025.

- South Korea's LS Corp has canceled the IPO of its electric vehicle components subsidiary Essex Solutions. The company had filed a preliminary application for a November 2025 offering and planned to raise about 500 billion won ($346 million) on the Seoul-based exchange. The decision to drop the listing was made after consultations with LS Corp shareholders and investors who expressed concerns about the upcoming deal. The holding company's shares jumped 5% afterward.

- The European IPO market has had the best start to the year in its history, according to the Financial Times. Five January offerings raised about a quarter of the total amount of funds raised in the region for 2025, the publication calculated. Deutsche Bank calls the current environment the most favorable in a decade. Last year, the volume of listings amounted to €16.1 billion, but bankers now forecast an increase in activity in the industrial, technology and logistics sectors: last year's rally on European stock exchanges raised company valuations and made stock exchange debuts more attractive.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor