In the first 6 months of 2026, the number of bankrupt large U.S. companies has directly surged to 372.

This figure not only sets the highest record in 16 years since 2010, but in just half a year it also directly knocked down the total number of bankruptcies for all of 2022 (317).
Just in May and June alone, bankrupt large companies reached 72 in a single month, the highest peak since the COVID outbreak in 2020.
The first ones to fall weren’t “air” projects, but real, tangible industrial businesses:
Industrial: 50 bankruptcies leading the way
Consumer Discretionary: 35 companies down
Healthcare: 26 blowups
Business models that had been limping along for the past decade or more under a low-interest environment have completely failed.
When borrowing costs remain high and the refinancing interest rates for maturing debt double, large enterprises without the ability to generate “life” through free cash flow can only be sacrificed in batches to macro deleveraging.
U.S. stock market indices may look as if they’re still being propped up by just a handful of AI compute and tech giants, but the underlying real-economy industrial supply chains and consumer core are already shutting down in large numbers.
Data source: (S&P Global Market Intelligence)