SpaceX shares are still trading well above their initial public offering price. Investors are eagerly anticipating IPOs by Anthropic and OpenAI. And Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is preparing for a blockbuster U.S. listing.

So does that mean the IPO window is now wide open for all the private-equity backed companies that have been waiting for years to go public?

Not so fast. Yes, deals have rebounded from the near-standstill in 2022-24, when rising rates sapped the enthusiasm for new IPOs.

But SpaceX makes up almost 60% of the IPO deal volume in North America so far this year. Year-to-date volumes overall are still not on track to match the private-equity heyday of 2021-22, according to data from Bain & Co.-and they're not nearly enough to clear the massive backlog of potential new offerings.

"The IPO window is open only for a small group of high-quality assets today," said Brenda Rainey, who advises private-asset managers and investors at Bain.