In 2025, the initial public offering (IPO) market continued to recover from the decline of 2022 and 2023. For the second year in a row, the markets saw more IPOs, more special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), and more capital raised in IPOs.
Looking at the data, we see that IPOs actually gained strength at the end of the year – IPOs raised more money, and SPACs almost reached 2020 levels.
2025 IPOs increase for the third consecutive year
Using data from Jay Ritter, a renowned IPO academic with a long history of activity, we look at historical IPOs of US companies.
Ritter’s data do not include exchange-traded funds. It also allows us to separate out companies whose IPO price was less than $5, SPACs, banks, unit offerings, partnerships, trusts, and REITS into a separate “Other” category (below).
Chart 1: IPO growth continues in 2025
In 2025, we see a total of 354 US equity market IPOs – which is 136 more than in 2024 and 206 more than in 2023, but still well below 2021’s high. However operating company IPOs have still not returned to the levels seen in the late 2010s.
2025 IPO raises $44 billion
Capital raising continued to increase in 2025, with (non-SPAC) IPOs raising a total of $44 billion; $14 billion more than in 2024 and $24 billion more than in 2023. The capital raised in 2025 is more than the total capital raised between 2015 – 2018.
Notably, 81% of new IPOs chose Nasdaq for their listing, raising a total of $25 billion on the day of the IPO.
Chart 2: Capital raised in IPO increased
Industrials and tech companies dominated the 2025 IPO.
With the AI boom, it is no surprise that information technology (IT) companies account for more than 25% of IPOs in 2025 (non-SPAC). Overall, IT and industrials companies accounted for more than half of the 2025 IPOs.
Notable names include:
- CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV), which raised $1.5 billion and reached a market capitalization of $18.6 billion in one day.
- SailPoint, Inc. (SAIL), which raised $1.38 billion and reached a market capitalization of $12.2 billion in a day.
- Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (FLY), which raised $998.6 million and reached a market capitalization of $8.5 billion in one day.
But the winner in raising the most amount in an IPO in 2025 is health care company Medline, Inc. (MDLN), which raised $6.26 billion in its IPO.
Chart 3: Tech and industrials make up more than half of 2025 IPOs
First day returns continued their positive trend
First day return, or IPO pop, measures the return on a stock from the institutional placement price to the close on the stock’s first day of trading.
In 2025, we see one-day IPO returns improve slightly over 2024 – and get closer to the long-term average. especially:
- The average IPO pop was 13%, and the average IPO pop was 22%.
- The POP of 71% companies was positive.
Chart 4: IPO first day return distribution
The pop of good IPOs pales in comparison to usual
We also see that the longer the 2025 IPOs remained listed, the weaker their “pop” became (green line in Chart 5).
Despite the decline in the performance of the average 2025 IPO – long-term average returns have been better than those of the 2024 (pink line) and 2023 (dark blue line) IPOs. Interestingly, 6 months average Returns are second best with 36%; However, it does not include IPOs after June because they are not old enough.
Chart 5: 2025 IPOs outperform over the past three years over the long term
Unicorns were less special in 2025
The data in Chart 6 shows returns based on one-day market cap through year-end 2025. The size of the bubble is determined by how much capital the company has raised.
In 2024, we saw a strong size-bias for returns – where unicorns were more likely to have positive returns than smaller companies. In 2025, that trend has mostly disappeared. by the end of the year,:
- The cap-weighted return using year-end market cap was 6.5%
- The overall average return was 1.29%.
Chart 6: 2025 IPO returns by year end
Looking at IPOs by sector (circle coloured):
- Health care Shares performed best with an average return of 39% through December 31, 2025.
- consumer staples also performed well, but recall Chart 3, there was only one consumer staples IPO, SFD. The sole sector IPO gave returns of 13% till December 31, 2025.
- energy sector performed the worst with an average decline of 38.5% by December 31, 2025.
- information technology The largest number of IPOs were those with the largest cumulative raising ($11.2 billion). However, by the end of the year the average return of IPOs in the sector stood at -33%.
Looking on the horizontal axis, we see different demand for capital across sectors:
- The two largest IPOs were MDLN, which had a one-day market cap of $54 billion, and CRWV, which had a one-day market cap of $18.6 billion (although both raised a fraction of that value).
- Health care The sector was not far behind IT, with $10.6 billion raised in IPOs among 34 companies.
- industrial- Only $5 billion was raised, even though there were 53 IPOs in the sector, which shows that industrial companies have about half the demand for capital compared to health care companies.
SPAC recovery: by count and size
We also saw an improvement in SPACs, which reached the third highest level on our record – right behind 2020 and 2021 – with 88 more SPACs listed in 2024 compared to 2020, and only 101 fewer SPACs compared to 2020.
Right now, 120 of the 2025 SPACs are still actively looking for a target (orange), while 24 have already announced a deal (violet).
Remember, SPACs typically have about two years to find a deal, although they can seek shareholder approval to extend the life of the SPAC (usually by another year). After that it is necessary to liquidate them. To that end, looking at prior vintages of SPACs:
- All 2024 SPACs are still active – at year-end, eight had completed a deal (green), 26 have announced deals, and 22 are still active.
- Only two 2023 SPACS are still active, and two have expired (black), which makes sense as we enter 2026.
- 50% of SPACs were liquidated from the peak listing year of 2021.
Chart 7: New SPAC listings nearly triple in 2025 compared to 2024
In 2025, many SPACs raised more capital than in the previous three years. The average SPAC raised $200 million (gray box, Chart 8), only slightly less than $220 million in 2021, and mostly in line with 2016-2020.
Chart 8: 2025 SPACS raise more capital than 2023 and 2024
SPAC prices remain around $10
Active SPACs that are still looking for deals ranged in price from $9.94 to $13.03, with an average price of $10.47 and an average price of $10.28.
The SPACs that have announced deals are priced slightly higher, but that’s mostly due to WLACU’s strong performance. The data in Chart 9 shows that only a few SPACs that have announced deals are trading above $11.
Chart 9: Active SPAC prices still hover around $10
2025 was a strong IPO market
Last year was one of the best years for IPOs in the last decade (outside of 2020-2021). We see more IPOs, more capital raised, more SPACs and better returns on day one in 2025.
Our IPO Pulse predicts a continued strong IPO market in 2026. Counting only “centicorns” – companies valued at $100 billion or more – the list of potential IPOs includes SpaceX (which recently acquired XAI), OpenAI, ByteDance, Anthropic AI, Databricks, and Stripe. Thanks in large part to AI investments, Bloomberg suggests companies with a combined value $3 trillion IPO may come in 2026
In short, 2026 could be a historic year for IPOs!
