2025 IPOs Are Back with a Bang — And These Upcoming Names Should Be on Your Radar

TradingKey - After a multi-year slowdown, the IPO market is making a strong comeback — and 2025 is shaping up to be a banner year.

According to Renaissance Capital, U.S. IPOs surged 20% in Q2, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 11% gain for the same period. Leading the charge is Circle, the stablecoin leader, which raised $1.1 billion in its debut and posted one of the best first-day performances ever for a billion-dollar IPO. Its success sent a strong signal: crypto-native companies are finally being welcomed by public markets.

Randy Baron, portfolio manager at Pinnacle Associates, summed it up: “2025’s IPO market looks solid so far. If rate cuts keep coming — like we’ve seen in Europe and the U.K. — we could be on track for the biggest IPO tally since the COVID era.”

Crypto & AI Are Leading the Pack

Circle is hands down one of the top IPO performers this year. A big part of that success stems from regulatory clarity: the recently passed GENIUS Act gave the U.S. stablecoin market a clear framework. It requires issuers to back coins 1:1 with cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries — a move that boosted institutional confidence and helped reprice the sector.

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are another growing trend. By turning illiquid assets into blockchain-based tokens, RWA projects increase accessibility and unlock liquidity — a big plus for both retail and institutional players.

Meanwhile, AI is the other big story of 2025 — but with a twist. Unlike earlier waves of enthusiasm around chipmakers, this time the focus is on infrastructure and applications.

CoreWeave — which IPO’d in March — provides the compute power needed to run large AI models. It's addressing one of AI’s biggest bottlenecks: GPU-based cloud infrastructure for model training and inference. The company’s growth prospects got a major boost after signing a $11.9 billion, 5-year deal with OpenAI. Notably, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even showed up at the IPO roadshow to publicly endorse the firm — not something investors see every day.

On the AI open-source front, projects like DeepSeek have made it dramatically easier to build and deploy AI systems. Multiple agent frameworks now integrate models like OpenAI, Anthropic, Qwen, and LLaMA — helping the developer ecosystem grow fast and wide.

Figma is another name commanding attention. The collaborative design platform has leveraged AI to improve productivity and automation in enterprise design workflows. As one of the clearest use cases of SaaS + AI synergy, Figma shows how the application layer of AI can turn into sustainable revenue growth.

Coming Up: Space, Defense, and AI-Powered Healthcare

Next in line is Firefly Aerospace — a commercial space and defense company that’s gotten plenty of attention from investors. Firefly is set to IPO this week, offering 19.3 million shares at $45 apiece.

The company recently landed a 177million NASA contract and successfully landed its own “Blue Ghost ” space craft on the moon. In addition to commercial launches, Firefly is involved heavily in the U.S. defense space ecosystem—and has received a 50 million investment from Northrop Grumman. It also has close ties with Lockheed Martin and L3Harris.

Revenue for Firefly jumped 570% year-over-year in Q1, and orders have now exceeded $1.1 billion, painting a picture of high momentum — even if the company remains loss-making for now.

Healthcare is another area where AI is having a major impact. Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, and Google have all expanded their healthcare AI portfolios this year. Microsoft is working with major hospitals to deploy Azure-based diagnostic tools. NVIDIA’s Clara platform is powering AI in medical imaging, genomics, and drug discovery.

HeartFlow is a standout in the space. The company’s AI platform for diagnosing coronary artery disease has FDA approval and, more importantly, reimbursement backing from UnitedHealthcare — opening the door to wide commercial adoption. Revenue grew 38.6% in Q1, but HeartFlow also burns a lot of cash — which could pressure its valuation in a higher-rate environment.

The Crypto IPO Wave Is Just Getting Started

Circle may have kicked things off, but more are on the way. Grayscale and Gemini are just two of several crypto-native companies preparing to go public, as broader investor sentiment around digital assets improves.

Forbes described it well: “This summer, we’ll see the entire digital asset market reap the rewards of growing mainstream acceptance. A long-awaited IPO boom is here — and with it comes a wave of liquidity.”

Next up: Bullish, a digital asset exchange, is set to IPO next week. The company is looking to raise up to 629 million, selling 20.3 million shares priced between 28 and $31. If demand holds up, it could become another flagship listing in the blockchain infrastructure space.

Outlook: IPO Market Regains Confidence

After a sluggish 2024, the IPO market has clearly turned a corner. In July alone, 26 companies went public — more than many expected. With inflation stabilizing and investors recalibrating for potential rate cuts ahead, it seems the window for high-growth offerings has reopened.

From AI to crypto, healthcare tech to space innovation, the quality of listings is improving, and investor interest is strong.

Still, challenges remain. Wall Street is asking: can the IPO revival spread beyond just innovation-theme names? So far, most of the action is concentrated in the trendiest segments. Many strong companies are still sticking with private markets due to favorable funding conditions.

As Barron’s recently pointed out, the number of publicly traded U.S. companies has dropped from 8,000 in 1996 to fewer than 4,000 today — a structural factor that continues to weigh on public listings.