AI Share Sales Drive a Record First Half for Global Markets

AI-linked equity issuance became the defining force in global equity capital markets in the first half of 2026. The surge, powered by a record SpaceX listing, pushed activity to its highest first-half volume since 2021.

Global equity capital markets issuance reached $729.4 billion in the first half of 2026, up more than 73 percent year on year, according to the Dealogic ECM Highlights 1H26 report. Technology accounted for roughly a third of all issuance globally.

What the Report Found

The headline number is the pace. First-half issuance of $729.4 billion is the strongest since 2021, and convertible bond volumes hit a record first-half high alongside it.

The concentration is just as striking. According to the report carried by PR Newswire, SpaceX combined with global technology deals made up around 41.4 percent of all equity issuance in the first half.

IPOs led the charge. Global IPO volumes reached $207 billion in the first half, up from $68.6 billion a year earlier, a jump the report attributes squarely to SpaceX's historic offering.

The SpaceX Anchor

One deal reshaped the numbers. SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026, in what NPR described as a record-breaking listing that priced shares at $135 and raised around $75 billion, valuing the company near $1.75 trillion.

Dealogic categorizes the deal as an Aerospace listing, yet notes that SpaceX's equity story leaned on its AI infrastructure buildout and its xAI business as much as on rockets. The company folded xAI into its AI division earlier in the year.

The debut ran hot. CNN reported that SpaceX shares rose more than 19 percent on the first day, briefly lifting the company's market value above $2 trillion before pulling back in later sessions.

A Regional Split

The Americas drove the boom. Regional issuance reached $442 billion in the first half, up 104 percent year on year, with technology the dominant sector at 32 percent of deal value.

Europe recovered unevenly. EMEA issuance grew 29 percent on convertible bonds and private equity disposals, while the UK lagged again, dropping 14 percent as a pipeline of prospective listings failed to convert into sustained activity.

Asia told a policy story. China and Hong Kong led the region with over $105.2 billion, up 62 percent, growth the report ties to a national push to fund Chinese AI champions, mirroring the US race and bringing AI competition into the equity markets.

Beyond IPOs

The boom was not limited to first-time listings. Convertible bond volumes hit a record first-half high, a sign that companies are raising cheaper capital by borrowing against future share prices rather than diluting straight away.

Follow-on activity was strong too. Accelerated bookbuilds and private equity disposals fed the European recovery, with names such as Allegro.eu, Beijer Ref and Galderma cited among the larger deals.

That mix matters because it shows the AI capital wave reaching multiple parts of the market at once. Fresh listings, convertibles and secondary sales all rode the same demand, which is what a genuine cycle looks like rather than a single blockbuster deal.

The Bubble Warning

The bankers behind the data are not uniformly bullish. Samuel Kerr, Dealogic's Head of Global ECM, said the industry had never seen deal sizes like these, calling the volume of capital deployed for AI capex in the first half extraordinary.

Then came the caution. Kerr noted that the only two prior years when first-half technology issuance exceeded $100 billion were 2000 and 2021, both of which were followed by severe crashes.

He framed the open question as capacity. The elephant in the room, he said, is whether the capital markets are deep enough to sustain the next wave of megadeals, with Anthropic and OpenAI still waiting in the wings for the second half.

The Listings Still to Come

The second half could dwarf the first. VentureBeat reported that Anthropic is barreling toward an IPO that will test whether the private market's staggering AI valuations can survive public scrutiny.

Anthropic timed its own product moves to that narrative. Its cheaper Claude Sonnet 5 release was read partly as an effort to show it can drive the broad, recurring revenue that public investors reward.

OpenAI is on a similar path. Analysts expect both companies to list with valuations above $1 trillion each, which would extend the AI issuance wave that already defined the first half into the back half of the year.

Why It Matters for Operators and Marketers

This is not only a finance story. When a handful of AI names anchor global issuance, the health of the broad market and the runway of your AI vendors become linked in ways that were easy to ignore a year ago.

The underlying economics remain unresolved. Our reporting on whether AI giants are making money or burning GPU cash laid out why chipmakers and cloud platforms profit while many model startups still spend faster than they earn.

That spending is enormous and rising. As our coverage of Google's plan to double AI capacity every six months showed, the capex driving these listings is a long-term commitment that keeps the pressure on for revenue to follow. For buyers, the practical move is to treat vendor funding as a risk to document, not a detail to assume away.