Asia’s IPO markets have meaningfully expanded the exit options available to LPs, with Hong Kong, India and Japan standing out after a pickup in activity over the past 18 months.
According to HarbourVest’s 2026 Mid-Year Private Markets Outlook, “Idiosyncronicity Decoded,” Hong Kong raised $37–38 billion across 119 listings in 2025, a 218% increase year-on-year. Activity continued into the first half of 2026, with 87 listings raising $27 billion, up 98% on the same period the prior year. Average first-day returns on the exchange were roughly 61%, with AI and hard-tech names among the leading listings, per the report.
India’s private equity and venture capital exits reached $32.9 billion in 2025, the second-highest total on record, according to the report, which cites EY-IVCA data. According to the report, Domestic IPOs in India are now core to the underwriting case rather than a fallback exit route.
In Japan, the capital market was ranked third globally by market capitalisation. It highlights KIOXIA, the flash-memory maker, which listed at approximately $5 billion and has since appreciated roughly 50-fold, to become Japan’s most valuable company.
The Asia figures sit within a wider IPO market. According to the report, a handful of mega-venture companies are entering public markets at unprecedented scale. SpaceX’s IPO valuation was roughly 17 times the previously largest U.S. IPO, Meta in 2012, and three times the largest IPO capital raise, Saudi Aramco in 2019.
Global PE- and VC-backed IPOs raised approximately $104 billion across 534 listings in 2025. SpaceX alone has already raised more than $85 billion, while OpenAI and Anthropic are each reportedly pursuing IPO valuations approaching $1 trillion. Together, the three companies could raise more capital than the entire global PE- and VC-backed IPO market did in 2025.
For LPs, these potential listings carry implications beyond individual liquidity events. Their scale puts private-market valuations and the AI investment thesis in focus, while disappointing offerings could further delay distributions and prolong the liquidity constraints facing LPs.
The broader pipeline extends beyond these three companies, with AI, robotics, defense, infrastructure and drug discovery among the sectors producing the next generation of private-market companies.
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic show what is possible at the top end of the market. Stripe, Chime, Databricks and Canva will offer a broader test of whether the exit market has reopened.
The largest IPOs are also moving beyond consumer internet and SaaS, spanning companies in AI compute, power generation, industrial systems, healthcare logistics and security infrastructure. At the same time, scaled, PE-backed businesses with predictable cash flows are featuring among recent listings.
The IPO market is reopening across multiple secular growth themes, including AI, energy, healthcare, financial services and consumer IP.
That broader pipeline is not confined to the U.S. The report states that while headlines often focus on American AI champions, Asia is also producing its own category leaders. Moonshot AI, creator of the Kimi foundation models and assistant products, is one example, reinforcing the region’s importance as both a source of innovation and an increasingly viable exit market.
