Renaissance Capital’s Fall 2026 US IPO Preview, published September 8, points to a crowded autumn listings calendar led by artificial intelligence companies. Senior analyst Nicholas Einhorn said the firm expects strong activity, supported by healthy investor demand and a deep bench of prominent private companies preparing to go public. US IPO proceeds have reached a record $146 billion year-to-date, including roughly $75 billion from SpaceX’s June offering. Excluding that deal, the rest of the market has generated $71 billion. Anthropic, the safety-focused developer of the Claude model family, is among the potential fall candidates, while OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is also being watched although its timing is less certain. The pipeline also includes fintech, defense and consumer companies. AI infrastructure spending has strengthened the sector’s appeal to institutional buyers. The Renaissance IPO Index, which tracks recently listed companies, has gained 15.0% year-to-date and is outperforming the S&P 500. For portfolio managers, the concentration of AI candidates increases the need to distinguish between businesses with different commercialization stages and models. Anthropic and OpenAI occupy overlapping but distinct parts of the AI market, while fintech and defense candidates bring separate regulatory risks and growth drivers that are less tied to GPU supply chains or foundation-model economics.