⏳ Reading Time: 3 minutesWith so much attention focused on the SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO), some other events in capital markets got less attention than they might have done. SpaceX has been the largest IPO on record, but it wasn’t actually the largest equity raise in the public market in the second quarter. That award went to Alphabet, which raised around $85 billion in June (although $40 billion of that can be sold over time).
Among unlisted companies, we’ve seen Anthropic and OpenAI raise significant new money. At the same time, large tech businesses have tapped the bond markets – notably Nvidia’s recent $25 billion debt raise and even larger bond issuance from Amazon and Alphabet earlier this year. Large tech businesses are spending aggressively on their Artificial Intelligence (AI) build-out, and investors, for now, are happy to fund them.
We can see the impact of this playing out in all sorts of metrics. The chart below, for instance, shows capital investment by the US tech sector as a percentage of their total sales and their cash generation. These figures will likely rise further from here. Estimates for capital spending by so-called hyperscalers in 2026 have topped $1 trillion.
