Dealogic: Japan saw 18 IPOs in H1 2026, the lowest since 2011, despite stock market surges, partly due to Japan's lack of AI, data center, and chip startups
THE SO WHAT
Japan’s lowest IPO count since 2011 — despite a strong stock market — is a warning about what happens when your startup pipeline misses AI, data center, and chip exposure. If you’re building in Japan, the gap is an opportunity: capital and policy will increasingly chase anything that looks like core compute or infra, not another consumer app.
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