Databricks CEO calls 2026 “a terrible year to go public” as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI prepare to absorb $200 billion in IPO capital

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said 2026 is "a terrible year to go public" as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI prepare to absorb over $200 billion in IPO capital. The $134 billion data company will wait for a quieter window before listing.

TL;DR Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said 2026 is “a terrible year to go public” as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI prepare to absorb over $200 billion in IPO capital. The $134 billion data company will wait for a quieter window. Ali Ghodsi says the $134 billion data company will eventually list but refuses to compete for attention against the biggest tech IPO window in history Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said 2026 is “a terrible year to go public” as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI prepare to absorb over $200 billion in IPO capital. The $134 billion data company will wait for a quieter window. TL;DR Three companies are preparing to enter public markets this year with a combined valuation that could exceed $3 trillion. SpaceX is set to list as early as 12 June https://thenextweb.com/news/cerebras-ipo-spacex-openai-anthropic-listings at a $1.77 trillion valuation, selling 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each in what will be the largest IPO in history. Anthropic has filed at a $965 billion valuation https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-ipo-confidential-filing-openai-race-965-billion . OpenAI is preparing its own filing https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-ipo-confidential-filing-anthropic-race targeting up to $1 trillion. Databricks, valued at $134 billion and widely expected to be among this year’s IPO candidates, has decided to sit it out. “ We will be a public company ,” CEO Ali Ghodsi told Bloomberg Television https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-04/databricks-ceo-plans-to-avoid-ipo-during-year-of-huge-offerings on Thursday. “ I just think this is a terrible year to go public. ” Ghodsi’s reasoning is straightforward. When SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are collectively seeking to raise upwards of $200 billion from public investors, every other tech IPO risks being treated as a side show. Institutional allocation budgets are finite, and the three mega-offerings will consume a disproportionate share of them. There is also a valuation concern. Ghodsi has previously said he wants to avoid the trap that caught many tech companies in 2022, when newly public firms were forced to prioritise margins after their share prices collapsed. “ If I wanted to have a crazy, crazy valuation, we would have gone public in the last 12 months, ” he told Fortune https://fortune.com/2025/12/17/databricks-ceo-ali-ghodsi-on-where-ai-is-most-bubbly-and-how-the-company-settled-on-its-134-billion-valuation/ in December. “ We just want to have a fair valuation that we can continue growing into. ” Databricks can afford to wait. The company raised over $4 billion https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-surpasses-4-8b-revenue-run-rate-growing-55-year-over-year in its Series L in December 2025 at the $134 billion valuation, then added $1.8 billion in debt financing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-23/software-maker-databricks-inks-1-8-billion-financing-package from JPMorgan and private credit lenders in January 2026. It has crossed a $4.8 billion revenue run rate, growing more than 55% year on year, and is generating positive free cash flow. The stated motivation for eventually listing is employee liquidity. “ We want to create a market transaction mechanism for our employees ,” Ghodsi said. That is a practical concern for a company whose stock options and RSUs have been priced against a series of private-market valuations that have no public-market equivalent. Ghodsi’s decision highlights a second-order consequence of the AI IPO boom. The three mega-offerings are not just absorbing investor capital. They are absorbing the infrastructure of going public itself https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-morgan-stanley-goldman-sachs-ipo-lead-banks : the banks, the analysts, the roadshow schedules, the media attention. A $134 billion data platform listing in the same quarter as a $1.77 trillion rocket company is a footnote, regardless of how strong its fundamentals are. Other potential IPO candidates face the same calculus. Any company valued below $500 billion risks being crowded out of the conversation entirely. The irony is that 2026 may be remembered as both the best and worst year for tech IPOs: the best for the handful of companies large enough to command attention, and the worst for everyone else. Databricks competes with public companies such as Oracle and Snowflake https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-800-billion-valuation-revenue-30-billion-ipo in the data and AI infrastructure market. By waiting, Ghodsi is betting that a quieter window, perhaps in 2027, will let Databricks command a premium rather than being priced as a warm-up act. Given that the company has $6 billion in recently raised capital and no immediate need for more, the patience costs nothing except the liquidity its employees are waiting for. Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.