The IPO wave is not a forecast anymore. SpaceX listed on June 12 at a market value of about $1.77 trillion, the largest IPO ever, raising about $75 billion at pricing. Law firms have already won the first mandates: Gibson Dunn took SpaceX and Davis Polk the underwriters.
Behind that debut, the two biggest AI companies are lined up. Anthropic, valued at $965 billion in late May, submitted a confidential draft registration statement on June 1. Its listing could come as soon as November at a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, raising up to $100 billion.
Anthropic filed its registration statement publicly on Oct. 26 and applied to list on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.”
OpenAI, valued at $852 billion after its most recent closed round, announced on June 8 that it had filed confidentially. Press reports have Wilson Sonsini guiding Anthropic's offering and Cooley and Wachtell Lipton preparing OpenAI's, though neither company has confirmed its counsel publicly.
Then come the five other companies on the list of expected IPOs compiled by Pirical, a data firm that tracks lawyer moves and puts the full pipeline at about $3 trillion: Databricks, valued at $190 billion in August, and Stripe, valued at $159 billion in a February tender offer, along with Canva, Anduril and Cohere. None of the five has announced IPO counsel or a filing.
The firms that want those capital markets mandates are not waiting for announcements to position themselves. The lateral hiring data shows who is hiring ahead of those listings and how hard. If you are an associate or a lateral partner deciding where to move, that data is worth reading as closely as any offer letter.
- IPO activity is accelerating, with SpaceX raising about $75 billion and Anthropic filing to list on Nasdaq.
- Capital markets hiring is rising: Orrick added eight partners while Baker McKenzie and Reed Smith each posted net gains of six.
- For lawyers weighing a move, hiring data offers clues, but client relationships remain the real measure of a firm’s IPO prospects.
- Read the full analysis before relying on headline compensation or an expected IPO pipeline.
Where Capital Markets Partners Are Moving
Pirical's tracking of lateral moves shows the turnaround in capital markets hiring. Capital markets lateral partner moves at Am Law 200 firms globally fell to 99 in 2023, then rebounded 11% in 2024 and another 25% in 2025, the strongest year in the period. Pirical reads that late surge, concentrated in the run-up to the current listings, as firms staffing up for the IPO wave.
In Pirical's ranking, Orrick was the most active firm with eight capital markets hires between May 2025 and May 2026, followed by DLA Piper with seven. Baker McKenzie and Reed Smith each added six capital markets partners over the same stretch without losing any. Orrick's eight hires came with two departures, so Orrick, Baker McKenzie and Reed Smith all sit at a net gain of six partners.
Over the same window Cadwalader ran a net loss of 13 capital markets lateral partners and A&O Shearman a net loss of 11. Neither made a capital markets lateral hire. Pirical attributes those departures to talent moving to the firms building for the listings ahead, though its chart does not trace where individual partners landed.
Partner Hiring at a Six-Year High
The capital markets story sits inside a broader market that is running hot. The 200 largest U.S. firms added 3,521 lateral attorneys in the first quarter of 2026, up 5.5% year over year. Partner hiring was the standout, rising 9.4% to 979 moves, the highest level in six years.
Experts’ read of the broad market puts private equity and M&A at the center of demand, with strong activity in secondaries, fund work and real estate as well.
New York led all markets with 871 lateral hires in the first quarter and Washington, D.C., followed with 438. Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco rounded out the top five.
Kirkland, Lewis Brisbois, DLA Piper and Dentons each added 100 or more partners in the year ending Sept. 30, 2025. A small group of firms is doing a large share of the market's lateral hiring, which means any firm recruiting you is likely competing with them for talent in every practice.
The Revenue Behind the Hiring
Law firms achieved 11.7% revenue growth in the first half of 2026, paired with a 4.2% expansion in billable hours. A 4.2% surge in demand is exceptional for an industry where long-term averages typically hover between 1.5% and 2%.
Transactional practices driving both megadeals and middle-market M&A account for much of this momentum, establishing a strong trajectory heading into the third quarter. While these figures encompass firmwide performance rather than capital markets alone, they underscore the broader financial engine funding current lateral expansion.
Winning a high-profile IPO mandate takes years of deal work and advisory relationships. A firm can’t build those after a company files. However, an open market paired with strong showings from marquee listings serves to accelerate overall timeline expectations across the sector, prompting major players to actively prepare large pre-IPO clients for public offerings.
Global IPO volume reached $40.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a 36% year-over-year increase, with U.S. listings accounting for $10.2 billion of that total, signaling robust market capacity. Banking and finance are top growth targets. Industry recruitment reflects this posture with major firms adding roughly 580 lateral partners across banking, finance, M&A, corporate and securities practices, compared to approximately 417 lateral hires in litigation.
How Associates and Laterals Should Read the Market
You do not need a capital markets book to benefit from this market. BCG Attorney Search's 2026 talent report found that banking, real estate and bankruptcy practices led year-over-year growth in lateral partner moves in 2025, with increases near or above 30%. The same report counted 3,009 lateral partner moves in 2025, a five-year high, and found litigation and corporate practices still led in total volume, with litigation up 10% and corporate up 17%.
If your work sits in banking, real estate or bankruptcy, the lateral market was moving toward you before the first of these listings priced.
A net loss like Cadwalader's or A&O Shearman's means a practice is losing its people and a run of hires like Orrick's shows where a firm is investing. What the numbers do not tell you is who will win the work. Davis Polk shows zero capital markets lateral hires and a net loss in Pirical's window, yet it advised the underwriters on the SpaceX listing. Latham and Kirkland also run slightly negative on the same chart.
So ask the firm courting you where its IPO work comes from, which pre-IPO clients the group already serves, who holds those relationships and whether the growth plan survives if several of the companies on everyone's list never file.
A bigger pay package makes those questions easy to skip. Pay also drives moves. Partners benchmark their compensation against peers and become more willing to leave when it falls short.
Guarantees of $20 million or more a year are becoming more common for top lateral partners, and packages worth more than $30 million for some. Those numbers describe the top of the lateral market, not typical partner pay. Even there, a guarantee shows how much a firm wants the hire, but it says nothing about whether the IPO work will be there when you arrive.
Lessons From the Last IPO Bust
U.S. IPO proceeds fell from 2021's record $275 billion to about $18 billion in 2022 and most of the firms that had rushed to recruit capital markets talent slowed or stopped hiring. Cooley and Kirkland later cut associates after hiring too many of them during the boom.
A strong debut can still fade. SpaceX shares closed at $158 on Oct. 2, about 30% below the $225.64 high they hit within days of listing, after briefly falling below the $135 IPO price over the summer. A big deal that prices badly or trades down can make the market more cautious.
The current list is less certain than it looks. Anthropic is the only company on the list with a reported 2026 window. OpenAI's CEO said in September that an IPO will not happen in 2026.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, Stripe president John Collison and Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf have each said publicly in 2026 that they are in no rush. Other companies are pulling back, with Oura delaying its debut and Holtec suspending its IPO. If few of the seven companies still waiting go public, the firms that hired ahead of the wave will have added partners for work that never arrives.
The Scoreboard Is Already Filling In
As filings go public, the mandates will be the clearest scoreboard of which firms read this hiring wave correctly. Wilson Sonsini, the reported Anthropic pick, hired three capital markets partners and lost three in the same window. Cooley, which press reports link to OpenAI, hired three.
A lateral hire alone does not win an IPO mandate. The client relationship does. Compare the names on the mandates with the names on the hiring chart, and move toward the firms that show up on both.