Between StubHub and Klarna, bankers say roaring IPO demand feels like 2021 again

• Public investors are clamoring for new IPOs, and startups are steadily coming back to the market.
• Last week marked the busiest period for IPOs since 2021, with over $4 billion raised across 6 deals.
• Still, some investors worry the best startups are sitting out this IPO wave.

The IPO window has cracked wide open this fall, and investors are piling in.

Bankers say their order books are bigger than they've been in years as investors clamor for new listings. And those investors are getting their wish — last week marked the busiest period for IPOs since 2021, and ticket reseller StubHub, which had delayed its IPO after the market plunged in April, is set to begin trading on Wednesday.

"Our order books are as large as we've seen, and we're seeing participation across all global investor types," Sumit Mukherjee, head of market intelligence for equity capital markets at JP Morgan, told Business Insider. "Recent interest is even in excess of what we experienced during the 2021 wave, when the enthusiasm for IPOs was strong."

Among last week's top six listings, which raised more than $4 billion between them, was "buy now, pay later" giant Klarna. The "buy now, pay later" giant raised $1.37 billion in its IPO after delaying the listing earlier this year. The next day, blockchain lender Figure went public after raising nearly $800 million in its IPO. Its shares are now trading over 60% above their IPO price.

Mukherjee said he expects at least 15 IPOs to launch this month. Between October and December, he said the public markets could "easily" see 20 to 25 more listings amid roaring investor demand for more IPOs.

But there may be more buyers clamoring for new listings than there are top companies ready to list, Mukherjee said.

He said he expects more companies to begin preparing to go public this year and in 2026 as new listings "rebuild confidence in the IPO market."

With so much capital available in the private markets and copious regulations placed on public companies, however, some investors aren't sure this year's listings will provide enough motivation to new IPO candidates.

"The bankers assume that companies want to go public, and I don't think there's the same desire that there used to be," said Peter Hébert, partner and cofounder of VC firm Lux Capital. "For the largest, most advantaged companies right now, I can't think of much of a reason to go public."

That tension appears to be catching the White House's attention, too. In a Truth Social post Monday, President Donald Trump suggested that companies should only be required to report their earnings every six months rather than quarterly. Such a change, which would be subject to SEC approval, could "save money and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies," Trump said.

Reframing the IPO pop

After a three-year IPO drought, pent-up public market demand has helped fuel major IPO pops this year. Design software company Figma's stock jumped more than 300% over its IPO price in the first week after its July IPO, while crypto company Circle surged more than 800% over its IPO price in June.

Those blockbuster IPOs have helped drum up further investor enthusiasm. But for startup founders and investors, they've come at the literal expense of significant discounts to company shares. Nearly every major public listing in the second quarter of the year was priced below the companies' peak private valuations, according to PitchBook; Circle, for example, was last privately valued at $9 billion in 2022 but valued at $6.9 billion in its IPO.

Those discounts have indeed helped fuel IPO demand, said Jimmy Williams, head of West Coast equity capital markets for the bank's tech, media, and telecommunications segment.

"When the broader market is really expensive, investors can look to IPOs for alpha, because they're priced at a discount to fair value to incentivize investors to buy the stock," he said. "As a result, they generally trade up."

However, companies going public this fall aren't seeing the same degree of IPO pops from earlier this year.

Crypto exchange Gemini Space Station recorded the highest IPO pop of September so far after its shares surged over 60% above its IPO price on the stock's first day of trading, in part due to the company allocating an outsize portion of its IPO to retail traders.

Still, that's just a fraction of the 250% pop Figma saw on its first day of trading, and Gemini's shares have fallen in the days since to settle closer to 15% above their IPO price. Other pops this month have been more modest, like Klarna's, which saw the fintech company's stock open 30% over its IPO price.

Bankers attributed the diminishing pop to a few factors. For one, as more companies go public, banks can more easily price some subsequent candidates by comparing them to their peers in the same sector. And, because investor demand for IPOs is outpacing supply, many IPO candidates now have more power to push for better pricing, said Gregor Feige, head of UBS' Americas equity capital markets unit.

More competitive pricing and decreased likelihood of IPO volatility could be a boon for the next wave of companies considering public market debuts.

"I think if we had a bunch of Figma-like IPOs with big price fluctuations in the fall, people would say, what's going on with the market? Why are these IPOs getting so mispriced vis-à-vis demand?" Williams said. "It's healthy that we're seeing discounts tighten and aftermarket performance moderate."

While crypto has reigned supreme in the IPO market this year, bringing companies to market like Circle, Bullish, and Gemini, Mukherjee expects the fall IPO push to help widen the aperture for more IPOs next year across more varied sectors and growth profiles. Black Rock Coffee Bar, a chain of coffee shops that went public last week, could serve as an example for consumer goods companies hoping to step out, for example.

Looking ahead to 2026

As the IPO markets recover, Lux's Hébert said he expects many high-quality startups to go public next year at the earliest rather than in the next few months. "The household names, 2026 is much more on their radar," he said.

Hébert and Emily Zheng, a senior VC analyst at PitchBook, agreed that, at least for now, top-valued private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX don't have much to gain by going public. Zheng noted that these startups are basically in their own league, with access to tens if not hundreds of billions in private capital and virtually endless secondary market demand. By staying private, they can keep raising money while avoiding the costs and pressures of required quarterly earnings disclosures.

Most unicorn companies aren't in that bucket, however, Zheng said, and still have a lot to gain from a public listing. And Feige is betting that even those tier-one startups will need to take the public market plunge at some point.

"They've taken a lot of investment from crossover investors who are going to want to see liquidity," he said. "So there needs to be some point at which most of these companies go public."

Liquidity has remained a concern for many investors as companies stay private for longer, even as secondary markets surge. Feige added that more companies are including secondary transactions in their IPOs, which can help provide additional immediate liquidity to early employees and investors.

While top IPOs like Figma certainly grab investor attention, a few standout listings won't be enough to grant the IPO market a full rebound, Zheng said. Instead, whether the IPO window reopens across all sectors will depend on the sustained pace of VC-backed companies coming to market.

"Having a consistent cadence of companies that go public, get good public investor demand, and continue to do well, will bolster confidence across more startups," she said.

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