SpaceX was the center of the VC universe in the first half of 2026. Elon Musk’s company saw a $1.7 trillion initial public offering in the largest IPO of all time, the NVCA/Pitchbook reported. It was bigger than the next U.S. VC tech IPO by 17 times. Meanwhile, the announced $60 billion purchase of Cursor, a four-year-old coding startup, and the $250 billion merger with xAI in Q1 have made SpaceX the ultimate “kingmaker” in VC, said the Venture Monitor report from the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook. But the wealth is concentrated. Overall, the market has still struggled to unlock IPOs, and few M&A deals outside of healthcare have been notable. The distributions that will be generated from the SpaceX IPO and eventually from the xAI and Cursor acquisitions will reach a broader investor base than normal for three companies because of SpaceX’s size and use of secondaries, but they do not signal a reopened liquidity market. The market is red hot because of SpaceX. Source: NVCA/Pitchbook “SpaceX’s IPO was the first of three potential trillion-dollar listings by US VC-backed companies in 2026, and what many want to view as the opening of an IPO window,” said Nizar Tarhuni, Executive Vice President of Research & Market Intelligence at PitchBook, in a statement. “The scale of these companies is their differentiating factor, though, largely boxing out the rest of VC from public markets. The pipeline of companies in IPO registration remains low, and broad liquidity hasn’t yet returned, leaving…
