The expected surge of cryptocurrency companies going public in 2026 hasn’t happened, with several firms now postponing their plans. Companies like Kraken, Ledger, Consensys, and Grayscale have all put their US stock market listings on hold this year, pointing to a struggling crypto market and decreased trading as the reasons.
These delays aren’t happening in isolation. While crypto companies are pausing, investors are pouring money into AI technology and preparing for potentially massive public offerings from companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
The 2026 Crypto IPO Pipeline That Stalled
Even after privately filing for an IPO in November 2025, Kraken’s parent company, Payward, put those plans on hold in March 2026.
In April, a share sale to Deutsche Börse valued the exchange at $13.3 billion, which is about a third less than the $20 billion valuation from its previous funding round.
In May, an update on Kraken’s potential IPO revealed the company had reduced its workforce by approximately 150 positions as it implemented new automation technologies.
In May, Ledger unexpectedly cancelled its plans to list on a US stock exchange. Instead of going public and aiming for a valuation of over $4 billion – a goal it had been working toward with banks like Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays – the company chose to raise $50 million by selling shares privately.
The decision is detailed in a Ledger IPO pause report on BeInCrypto.
Consensys, the creator of MetaMask, has delayed its planned $7 billion public listing until at least the fall of 2026.
Grayscale put its planned IPO on hold in late May, even though it had publicly filed paperwork in November 2025. It’s now unlikely to move forward with the IPO before the end of the year, and this is part of a larger trend of delays for crypto companies looking to go public.
This year, BitGo is the only company of its kind to successfully raise funding, securing $213 million in January. The funding, priced at $18 per share, gave the company a valuation of $2.08 billion.
The stock price dropped nearly 22% on its second day of trading and has occasionally fallen to 36% below its initial public offering price.
BitGo became a publicly traded company after its initial public offering (IPO), raising approximately $213 million. Shares were priced at $18 each, valuing the company at nearly $2.1 billion. This IPO is notable as the first for a digital asset company in 2026, and the share price exceeded initial expectations.
— BeInCrypto (@beincrypto) January 22, 2026
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Blockchain.com, which confidentially filed in late May, is now testing a cold IPO market of its own.
Where the Capital Went
It’s easy to see why there aren’t many public investors in this space. The five biggest US tech companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle – are projected to spend over $600 billion on infrastructure by 2026.
Research from IEEE indicates that around $450 billion is being invested directly in AI computing power and data centers. This represents a significant 36% jump in planned spending compared to 2025.
Jim Cramer questioned how the market could afford the massive investments being made in tech companies. He calculated that companies like Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Amazon could require a combined $500 billion, and wondered what assets would need to be sold to raise that much capital. Cramer speculated that Microsoft likely doesn’t need the full $100 billion, but admitted he might be overly optimistic, ultimately concluding the market doesn’t have $600 billion available.
Investors on Wall Street are preparing for what could be the biggest initial public offering ever. SpaceX submitted its paperwork on May 20th, aiming for a company valuation between $1.75 and $2 trillion. The company plans to raise $75 billion, and the final pricing is expected around mid-June.
Anthropic secretly submitted paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) on June 1st, with a reported company value of $9.65 billion. This makes Anthropic, on paper, more valuable than OpenAI for the first time, according to NPR.
One observer noted that the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2026 is lively and could be exceptionally strong, but investors are being careful. They’re currently more interested in companies with established success in areas like artificial intelligence and space technology, rather than those solely focused on cryptocurrency.
As a researcher following market trends, I’m observing that the upcoming launch of OpenAI is creating a lot of buzz, and some are speculating about how that might affect investments, particularly in relation to a potential SpaceX IPO and the crypto market. Interestingly, instead of seeing funds flow *into* crypto as some might expect, we’re actually seeing movement in the opposite direction right now.
Bitcoin is currently trading around $69,552, which is about 45% lower than its high of $126,080 in October 2025, as reported by BeInCrypto.
U.S. Bitcoin ETFs experienced $2.3 billion in net outflows during May, marking the largest monthly decrease this year. This coincided with a 10-day period of ETF outflows as institutional investors shifted their money into AI-related stocks.
The Real Cost to Crypto
It wasn’t just a few missed predictions. As I’ve analyzed the impact of the anticipated 2026 AI surge on the crypto market, five key factors really stand out as major contributors to what crypto lost along the way.
- Public markets give crypto firms more than cash.
- They confer regulatory legitimacy through audits and disclosures,
- Broaden the institutional shareholder base,
- Create acquisition currency, and
- Pull in sell-side analyst coverage that compounds attention over time.
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Cryptocurrency companies have delayed those plans, leaving billions of dollars in potential IPO funding currently unused.
As a crypto investor, I’m seeing some worrying signs. The recent drop in Kraken’s valuation – from $20 billion to just $13.3 billion – tells me the next funding round for these companies will likely be at a much lower price than we expected earlier this year. It’s a reset, and it doesn’t look good for current valuations.
Kraken’s parent company, Payward, is raising new funding that values it at $20 billion. This is the same valuation it reached in November 2021, after a previous funding round of $800 million. This represents a recovery from the $13.3 billion valuation implied when Deutsche Börse bought a small stake (1.5%) earlier this year. Kraken has also been expanding through acquisitions, including Bitnomial and Reap, while dealing with…
— unfolded. (@cryptounfolded) May 11, 2026
Investment and skilled workers are now focusing on artificial intelligence. AI stocks are leading the way for overall market growth, and most venture capital funding over the last year has gone to AI companies.
According to one investor, the stock market’s gains this year are almost entirely due to artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. While the broader S&P 500, excluding AI companies, has only risen about 3.5% in 2026, and remained largely unchanged since the start of the Iran War in February, the UBS AI Winners Index has surged almost 50%. AI stocks have hit record highs eleven times in May alone, essentially driving all the market’s positive returns. Without AI, the current bull market wouldn’t exist.
Kraken addressed its initial slowness with AI by using automation, which unfortunately led to the elimination of 150 jobs. This highlights the rapid and significant changes happening within the industry as companies adopt AI internally.
Perhaps the biggest impact of going public is on how stories about the future are told. When companies list on the stock market, it signals which industries investors think will be most important over the next ten years.
By 2026, the focus will have shifted from using cryptocurrency technology as a foundation to building the infrastructure for artificial intelligence, although stablecoins and digital assets will still be developing within private businesses.
Is there Hope 2026 Is Still Crypto’s IPO Year?
The market for initial public offerings (IPOs) hasn’t disappeared, it’s just shifted away from cryptocurrency companies. Whether IPO activity picks up again in the latter half of 2026 will depend on how the price of Bitcoin changes, how much existing AI stocks decline after their IPOs, and if companies like Blockchain.com, who filed later, can meet the stricter requirements for going public.
Instead of focusing on when AI-related crypto projects will be listed on exchanges, the real cost of the anticipated 2026 AI boom for crypto is the overall positive market performance the industry was counting on this year.
2026-06-02 15:29