Nasdaq (NDAQ) will shorten the window of time required for newly public companies with large market caps to be included in its Nasdaq 100 (^NDX) index under a new “fast entry” rule, the exchange operator said Monday.
As of May 1, companies with market caps ranking within the top 40 members of the Nasdaq 100 will be eligible for inclusion in the index within 15 trading days after an initial public offering, drastically shortening the current timeline for inclusion of roughly three months after going public.
Nasdaq also noted that so-called fast entry inclusions will not require an already listed security to be dropped from the index, allowing the index to “temporarily increase the constituent count to more than 100.”
The rule changes come as Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) and the flagship AI developers OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) all consider 2026 IPOs, which are expected to be blockbuster offerings.
SpaceX is reportedly targeting a $75 billion raise at a valuation of $1.75 trillion, according to Bloomberg. Such a valuation would far exceed the largest IPO on record — Saudi Aramco’s (2222.SR) $29 billion raise — and immediately place SpaceX within the top 10 most valuable public companies, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Index inclusion can be intensely important for major public companies, as index fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) managers that offer products tracking indexes are required to buy stock in any new companies added to the index.
More than $30 trillion in assets are benchmarked to the S&P 500 (^GSPC), Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI), Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), and FTSE Russell (^FTSE) indexes, which are all considering changes to speed inclusion of newly listed companies, according to Bloomberg.
The Nasdaq 100 is “tracked by more than 200 investment products with over $600 billion in assets under management globally,” the company said Monday.
Jake Conley is a breaking news reporter covering US equities for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @byjakeconley or email him at jake.conley@yahooinc.com.
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