Goldman Sachs $120Bn IPO Surge Is Starving Crypto of Institutional Capital

Goldman Sachs confirmed on June 26, 2026, that U.S. IPO issuance has already reached approximately $120Bn at the year’s midpoint, matching the full-year record set in 2021, with roughly 50 companies having gone public so far, double the count from the same period a year earlier, and the bank’s chief U.S. equity strategist Ben Snider explicitly framing the surge as a function of AI financing demand and large corporate listings rather than speculative retail euphoria.

Snider, speaking on Goldman’s Exchanges podcast, stated that ‘to some extent, what’s happening is just a normal recovery,’ and added that despite elevated dollar volumes and accelerating activity, the market remains ‘a far cry from that level of euphoric sentiment’ seen during the dot-com era or the 2021 SPAC wave.

The full-year deal count is now forecast closer to 100 IPOs, squarely in line with the 25-year U.S. average, not the 250-plus seen in 2021 or the nearly 400 recorded at the height of the 1999 bubble.

The structural split between dollar volume and deal count carries a direct consequence for crypto markets. Kraken parent Payward, hardware wallet maker Ledger, digital asset manager Grayscale, and Ethereum software developer Consensys have all delayed or paused IPO plans in 2026.

The pullback reverses the expectations that had built at the start of 2026, when Circle’s successful CRCL listing and Bullish’s BLSH IPO pointed toward a wave of crypto equity offerings.

The open question the market must now resolve is whether the AI-driven IPO machine will continue absorbing institutional capital that would otherwise find its way into digital assets, or whether the crypto IPO backlog will clear once volatility subsides, unlocking a secondary wave of listings that drags spot token demand higher alongside it.

Goldman Sachs $120Bn IPO Reading: What the AI Capital Dominance and Stalled Crypto Listings Actually Reveal About Where Institutional Money Is Going

Context significantly enhances the raw $120Bn figure. Goldman’s own forecast range, as detailed in its February 2026 IPO outlook reported by Reuters, runs from an $80Bn floor to a $225Bn ceiling, with a $160Bn baseline, meaning mid-year proceeds are tracking near the lower bound of Goldman’s optimistic scenario, not yet at the upper end that would require mega-deals like OpenAI or Anthropic to list.

Goldman subsequently trimmed its deal-count guidance from 120 to roughly 100 IPOs as geopolitical risks persisted, keeping the $160Bn baseline intact, which underscores that the market is being driven by fewer, larger, higher-quality AI and technology offerings rather than a broad democratisation of new issuance.

The SpaceX IPO, which listed in 2026 under the ticker SPCX, exemplifies the dynamic Ben Snider described. It concentrated institutional growth capital into a single flagship AI-adjacent technology name, giving fund managers a credible high-conviction alternative to crypto assets at exactly the moment when token prices were underperforming.

Goldman Sachs IPO Issuance Barometer sits at approximately 139, a reading the bank characterises as a highly supportive macro backdrop, yet average first-day IPO returns are running at 15–19%, close to historical medians and nowhere near the triple-digit first-day pops that defined dot-com excess.

Strong conditions, disciplined returns, and a concentrated pipeline: that combination describes a functional capital market, not a bubble, and it is precisely that functionality that makes the competition with crypto more durable and more damaging than a speculative spike would be.

For the Kraken IPO, the Ledger IPO, and the Grayscale IPO specifically, the calculus has inverted. Each of those businesses was counting on an IPO window that assumed investors would price crypto equity at a premium to spot token exposure.

Instead, institutional capital has a more compelling narrative in AI IPOs, and the appetite for crypto-linked equity at premium multiples has contracted accordingly. The Consensys delay fits the same pattern: in an environment where Goldman explicitly ties the IPO recovery to AI capital formation, Ethereum infrastructure software is not the story institutional allocators are writing checks to join.

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