Bending Spoons, an Italian technology company that bought up brands including AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, is set to go public Wednesday at a valuation of more than $18 billion.

The company founded by four friends since college raised $1.68 billion in its offering and will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker " BSP."

The Milan-based company, led by Luca Ferrari, has said its approach is to revamp and retain businesses. Its main businesses also include video distribution and analytics company Brightcove and note-organizing app Evernote, among others. It struck a deal to buy AOL from private-equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2025.

Bending Spoons' offering comes after IPOs in the U.S. raised a record haul in the first half of the year, thanks to SpaceX's blockbuster listing last month. Traditional U.S. IPOs raised $130 billion in the first six months, with $86 billion of that coming from SpaceX's raise, according to Dealogic data.

The IPO market has been recovering after relatively muted activity for years because of rising interest rates and the ability for companies to easily raise money in the private markets. Many listings this year have involved companies related to artificial intelligence, infrastructure and defense.

Ravenous investor appetite for new issues has extended beyond traditional IPOs. South Korea's SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker, is hoping to raise more than $29 billion by issuing American depositary receipts, or ADRs, on the Nasdaq Stock Market later this month.

This year's offerings have skewed bigger -- 14 IPOs raised over $1 billion -- and they have overwhelmingly been successful, with newly listed companies trading up around 24% through Tuesday, according to Dealogic. The broader market's gains have been more muted and choppy.

That means big investors who are buying new issues are likely outperforming the broader market, a trend that hasn't been the norm over the last several years and might not continue.

Bankers, investors and exchange officials say they expect the second half of 2026 to also be busy. Inspire Brands, the private-equity backed owner of brands including coffee chain Dunkin', is planning to make its debut later this year.

And two other heavyweights are preparing for possible debuts. Artificial-intelligence rivals Anthropic and OpenAI filed for IPOs confidentially within days of each other in June. Both were recently valued at around $850 billion or more in funding rounds.

Based on the timing of their filings, they could launch IPOs as soon as August, but post-Labor Day is much likelier, according to people familiar with the matter.

SpaceX's stock rose 19% in its first day of trading, an ideal first-day "pop," according to many bankers. The IPO drew heavy interest from big institutional investors such as BlackRock, as well as from individual investors.

Its shares traded down some in recent days, dropping as much as 16% in a single day in late June. They are still up around 20% from their IPO price of $135, giving SpaceX a market value above $2 trillion.

Write to Corrie Driebusch at corrie.driebusch@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 01, 2026 11:32 ET (15:32 GMT)

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