We are at an inflection point, a moment when AI-driven mega IPOs are flooding the market—from SpaceX to the frenzy surrounding OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s upcoming initial public offerings. Meanwhile, smaller micro-cap IPOs are vanishing.

Micro-cap IPOs are initial public offerings of a company with a market capitalization, or “market cap” (total value of a company’s outstanding shares), historically around $5 million to $30 million (between 2010 and 2025). But more recently, regulators are requiring a minimum of $15 million in “public float” as they crack down and make it increasingly difficult for these smaller startups to go public. (Other key characteristics of a micro-cap IPO include a smaller float—making a smaller number of shares available to the public, which can add to volatility.)

Most recently, “tiny foreign companies in the U.S.” are on the decline as a result of a regulatory crackdown and stricter listing rules after “apparent pump-and-dump schemes—many of them based in Asia—cheated small and individual global investors,” according to Bloomberg News.

The aggressive scrutiny even led to a halt in trading in more than a dozen firms last year, including Hong Kong-based digital ad firm QMMM Holdings Ltd., which was notified of its delisting from the Nasdaq exchange in June.

As opposed to mega IPOs—which are valued in the hundreds of billions and able to raise multiple rounds of large-scale funding, ensuring their future viability in the near-to-long term (say, 5 to 10 years)—micro-cap IPOs struggle to attract capital. And when they do, it’s generally in the millions or tens of millions—which, if you think about the technology sector, is not a lot.

So far in 2026, the woefully small number of micro-caps that have gone public on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange—just 13—have raised less than $300 million in total, per Bloomberg. (That number is down from 80 micro-caps in 2025.) Compare that with SpaceX’s historic $85.7 billion raise, and you can begin to see the emerging funding gap and what is lost in the process.

Micro-cap IPOs are just as much a long-term strategy for early-stage companies to go public as they are an opportunity for everyday investors, perhaps without a lot of money, to invest in what has traditionally been at the core of the American economy—small businesses.