How the Three Most Valuable IPOs of 2026 Will Ignite a New RWA Narrative？

The US stock market is set to welcome the three most valuable IPOs in history this year—OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic. These three unicorns are also poised to bring fresh innovation and narrative depth to the RWA narrative within the crypto world.

In 2026, the US stock market is set to stage a trillion-dollar IPO frenzy.

OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic, three era-defining unicorns, have a combined valuation approaching $3.3 trillion, far exceeding the market capitalisation of the crypto sector. As for today, the total circulating market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, has just rebounded to $2.45 trillion.

It is anticipated that the listings of these three companies will not only drive an overall upward shift in the valuation benchmark for the technology sector but will also inject fresh scope for imagination and value anchors into the crypto world’s RWA narrative.

SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic: IPOs in Progress

Following recent geopolitical turbulence, the US stock market is currently in a recovery phase, whilst the AI and space technology sectors continue to attract massive institutional capital, with a market appetite for high-growth, high-barrier assets reaching a peak. The imminent IPOs of these three major projects are a concentrated manifestation of this trend.

SpaceX: The Largest IPO in History, Musk’s Final Puzzle Piece

SpaceX is the space-based Starlink project under Elon Musk’s. The uniqueness of its IPO lies in its three-dimensional business model of hardware with services and data: the ongoing sales of Starlink terminals, revenue from network service subscriptions, and the potential for tokenisation of space data assets.

According to public data, SpaceX is achieving global broadband coverage through its low-Earth orbit satellite network. It has deployed over 9,500 satellites, with revenue projected at approximately $12.3 billion in 2025, accounting for around 70% to 80% of SpaceX’s total revenue. The service has over 10 million users and is rapidly expanding into the aviation, maritime and defence sectors.

Regarding the IPO timeline, Musk has confirmed plans to proceed with the listing in 2026, with the process set to begin as early as June, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic.

It is worth noting that SpaceX has recently raised its target valuation for the IPO to over $2 trillion. Viewed from a broader perspective, when this largest IPO in human history is placed within the grand narrative of surpassing the seven giants of the US stock market, it transcends a mere fundraising exercise. Through a highly impactful vision and meticulous capital orchestration, it is continuously reinforcing market consensus and asset premiums ahead of the listing.

OpenAI: The AI Era’s Most Cash-Burning Growth Machine

As the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI has established absolute leadership in the field of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

From a fundamental perspective, OpenAI is growing at a pace unprecedented in human history: ChatGPT’s weekly active users have surpassed 900 million, Codex serves over 2 million developers weekly, and annualised revenue in February 2026 has crossed the $25 billion threshold. The company forecasts annual revenue exceeding $280 billion by 2030 and has publicly declared its ambition to build an AI super-app platform.

Just at the end of March, OpenAI completed the largest funding round in Silicon Valley’s history, raising a total of $122 billion from investors including SoftBank, Amazon, NVIDIA and Andreessen Horowitz, at a valuation of $852 billion. Amazon alone invested $50 billion, alongside a commitment to spend $100 billion on AWS cloud services.

A clear sign accompanying this development is that OpenAI has, for the first time, opened up banking channels to raise funds from individual investors. This move is widely interpreted as a move to build momentum ahead of a potential IPO in the fourth quarter.

In contrast to SpaceX’s status as the sole player in the commercial space sector, OpenAI currently remains mired in fierce competition and massive losses: it burns through over $14 billion annually, a cost incurred to maintain the computational infrastructure required for training cutting-edge models and expanding data centres, and the company has pledged to invest over $600 billion in cloud servers over the next five years.

Faced with competition on multiple fronts from Anthropic, Google and the open-source community, this parallel state of massive losses and rapid business growth will continue to be scrutinised by the public market.

Anthropic: OpenAI’s Strongest Rival, Focusing on Safety and Enterprise AI

In contrast to OpenAI’s aggressive expansion, Anthropic, developer of the Claude series of models, has adopted a more prudent approach favoured by compliance bodies and large enterprises. Its brand positioning of "AI safety first" has secured it the number two spot in the AI sector.

The business growth driven by this differentiated approach is equally staggering: Anthropic’s annualised revenue this year has surged from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion, setting a record for the fastest quarterly growth rate in enterprise software history for a company of this scale.

In fact, thanks to the advantages of its Claude series of models in long-text processing and the safety of Constitutional AI (a method of training AI systems to align with human values), Anthropic has become the preferred choice in the enterprise AI market: currently, eight of the global Fortune 10 companies are paying customers of Claude, with enterprise customers accounting for over 80% of revenue.

In its Series G funding round this February, Anthropic raised $300 million, with its valuation soaring to $380 billion.

It is reported that Anthropic is considering an IPO on the Nasdaq as early as October 2026, aiming to raise over $60 billion, with an estimated valuation range of between $400 billion and $500 billion at that time.

Summary: Pre-IPO is riding a wave of momentum

By 2026, RWA has become the most certain narrative in the crypto industry: the value of US Treasury bonds tokenised on-chain has exceeded $1.28 trillion, and the entire RWA market is projected to grow by over 200% year-on-year in 2025. The combined valuation of these three major IPOs approaches $3.3 trillion, far exceeding the current total market capitalisation of the crypto market, signalling that the crypto world is on the cusp of an unprecedented RWA boom: the most sought-after tech equity assets are waiting to be tokenised on-chain.

The current surge in a range of pre-IPO products represents the inevitable path for RWA to extend from bonds and ETFs to high-growth tech equities. Based on our observations, there are currently three main models for participating in pre-IPOs on-chain:

• Pre-market contracts: These facilitate equity-like trading via perpetual contracts, offering high capital efficiency and low barriers to entry. However, pricing is highly dependent on oracles, making them susceptible to manipulation and subject to significant risk exposure.
• Tokenisation of real equity: This involves establishing legal title on-chain through an SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) structure, with the underlying assets backed by real equity, ensuring a clear compliance pathway. This is the most legally robust of the three models, but it involves high compliance barriers and limited tradable shares, and currently remains in an early, institution-led phase.
• Shadow shares/IOUs: Pre-traded in the form of pre-market spot contracts, with physical settlement occurring once the underlying equity assets have been tokenised on-chain. The process is simple and rapid to implement, but the trust in the custody of the underlying assets is weak, and legal risks cannot be overlooked.

Each of these three approaches has its own trade-offs, and none are yet fully mature. However, the underlying logic is consistent: from US Treasuries and real estate to technology equities, the tokenisation of assets is an irreversible trend in financial innovation and a positive step towards financial democratisation, which will be enabling more ordinary investors to participate on an equal footing in scarce assets that were previously the preserve of top-tier institutions.

In summary, this year’s three major IPOs represent not only a historic moment for the US stock market but also provide the strongest catalyst for the deep integration of blockchain technology and Real-World Assets (RWAs). We will continue to monitor this trend, seeking a balance between product innovation and regulatory compliance, and will launch relevant RWA products at the appropriate time to provide investors with more efficient and transparent participation methods, whilst welcoming the arrival of the new era of equity tokenisation.
 

Further reading: Tokenized Stock Trading Week