Following up on the last post in this series, we now have data from January through August 2026. Special thanks to three student research assistants, Boyd Law students Rocco Marino and Enya Dinca, and UNLV Honors College undergraduate student Micaela Benavidez-Sosa, for all the work they did to pull together this information. A copy of the spreadsheet used to produce this report is available here.
I’ve leaned on Claude to create infographics to help summarize the information. Any errors or omissions in this are mine alone.
Deal Flow by Month
We’re still seeing a significant number of offerings going to market. SpaceX still stands apart, but SK Hynix’s IPO also raised a huge sum. We’re also seeing more direct listings than I would have anticipated.
SPACs, Operating Company IPOs, and Direct Listings
SPAC IPOs continue to account for over half of the dataset.
Jurisdictional Choices by Capital Raised and Deal Count
Texas leads as the jurisdiction raising the most capital, driven largely by SpaceX.
When you pull SPACs out, the data shows the Cayman Islands dropping away.
If we look at deal count instead of capital raised, the Cayman Islands reign supreme because there are so many SPACs.
When we exclude SPACs, Delaware takes the crown for most deals by a solid margin, coming in at 61%. This struck me as a little suspicious initially because I had not thought of the Cayman Islands as a hub for operating company IPOs. The 11 Cayman operating company IPOs are mostly small cap raises. Five happened in August. It’s a real uptick in the Cayman share for operating company IPOs.
If we look at the distribution for SPACs, the Caymans really dominate with Nevada, Delaware, and Maryland each picking up a single SPAC.
Direct Listings
When we turn to direct listings, Delaware leads Nevada by one with a range of other jurisdictions in the mix.
Issuer Counsel Leaders for Direct Listings
For this segment, a range of different law firms worked on direct listings.
Underwriters
We see a range of underwriters involved in IPOs this year.
If we evaluate by proceeds raised, Goldman Sachs stays on top.
Issuer Counsel
Here, the firms representing SPAC issuers participate in the most deals.
But if we exclude SPACs, the most present firms for issuer counsel are Latham and Goodwin.
Underwriter Counsel
There is some overlap between issuer and underwriter counsel. This shows underwriter counsel both with and without SPACs.
Controlled Company Choices
Companies that self-identify as controlled companies seem to make different jurisdictional choices than others. Although Delaware pulled about 61% of operating company IPOs in this set so far, the Delaware share of controlled company IPOs comes in lower. This chart shows controlled companies as a percentage of each jurisdiction’s IPOs–my rough estimate is that Delaware got about 48% of controlled company IPOs.
When we look at companies we flagged as having dual class stock, it’s a similar finding. There is a good bit of overlap between dual class companies and controlled companies, but not every controlled company will have dual class stock and not every company with dual class stock will self-identify as a controlled company.
