It's more insidious than that. These IPOs aren't being rushed, they were waiting for all the pieces to be in place to force 401ks and other retirement plans to buy these IPOs.

The most recent change was the NASDAQ adopting the "fast change rule" which allows newly IPO'd companies to be listed in the index after only 15 days of trading. This rule was decided March 30, 2026 and only came into effect May 1, 2026.

The plan is to rapidly drive these prices up in the first 15 days, get the companies listed in the NASDAQ so funds are forced to purchase them at higher prices, then leave retirement accounts holding the bag.

That is not why you are seeing a deluge in listings. It takes 1-2 years to make a company IPO ready and is a massive operational headache, and the controls needed take multiple quarters to implement.

The reason you are seeing a boom in IPOs versus 2023-25 is because a large portion of funds that are from the 2016-20 vintage are about to hit the 10 year mark when LPs need to be made whole.

This means you need to exit your investments either with an additional round, an acquisition, or (the most common approach for growth equity which is what series D and later rounds are) IPO.

what is going to cause the market to “sneeze”?

And oh boy do they make sure everyone knows that they are doing an IPO