Investors are on the hunt for the next big thing, and initial public offerings (IPOs) are some of their favorite places to find hot stocks for the year ahead. While the overall track record of IPOs is not that great in their first year, that’s not stopping investors from betting on upcoming IPOs.
While the IPO market has shown some signs of life in the last couple of years, the proceeds have not been high historically. The IPO market began opening up in late 2023, after the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes put debuts in a deep freeze. In the end, more than 100 companies conducted an IPO in 2023, raising $19.4 billion in proceeds, according to Renaissance Capital. Last year was even better: 150 IPOs raised $29.6 billion, according to Renaissance.
With a stable market environment and investors’ modest risk appetite, the IPO market in 2025 looks set for some potentially large debuts. Here are some of the most anticipated IPOs this year.
7 hot IPOs to watch for in 2025
1. Stripe
Stripe has been a rumored IPO candidate for a while. The company’s payments processing business for e-commerce has been riding the wave of online shopping, and Stripe has major supporters in the form of venture capital firms Andreesen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital. The company’s latest valuation is still a far cry from its high-water mark of $95 billion in 2021, and a transaction with Sequoia in 2024 valued the firm at just $70 billion.
2. Databricks
Databricks is a tech unicorn that has the potential to be an IPO valued in the tens of billions, and therefore one of the highest-profile offerings in any year that it goes public. Will that year finally be 2025? The company raised $10 billion in funding in January 2025, valuing the business at $62 billion. That’s up nicely from a 2023 valuation of $43 billion and $31 billion in October 2022. Rivals include Snowflake and Confluent. Databricks has some top investors, including Andreesen Horowitz, BlackRock, Tiger Global and Fidelity.
3. Cerebras Systems
It’s hard to get hotter than semiconductor companies focused on artificial intelligence, and that’s the business of chip company Cerebras, which competes with leaders such as Nvidia. The company filed IPO paperwork in August 2024, though it’s been facing concerns from U.S. regulators about one shareholder-customer that have slowed the process. Cerebras had a valuation of $4 billion as of 2021, a stale valuation, and the company reportedly wants to achieve double that in an IPO.
4. eToro
The broker eToro offers trading in stocks, options and cryptocurrencies, and it’s now looking to hit the markets itself. The broker tried to go public a few years ago via a SPAC, but had to scrap that deal. The London-based brokerage filed confidential IPO paperwork in February 2025, and the company appears to be targeting a $5 billion valuation, after being valued at $3.5 billion in early 2023. So the broker may hit the market soon, if the market remains amenable.
5. Chime Financial
Chime offers a financial app that acts like a bank, offering fee-free accounts for customers, and it confidentially filed some IPO paperwork in December, which could tee it up for a 2025 IPO. Chime has been a hit with consumers, and has an estimated 22 million active users as of 2024, according to Cornerstone Advisors. Speculation has been rife for years that Chime would be going public, but it’s still private and looking for the right time to debut. Chime’s high valuation was $25 billion in late 2021, but many tech companies’ valuations plummeted in 2022 and 2023.
6. Klarna
Klarna is a Swedish buy-now-pay-later leader, offering consumers an easy way to finance purchases as they buy them. The company filed its confidential paperwork for an IPO in November, putting it on track for a 2025 debut. Klarna has also long been rumored to be an IPO candidate, and its valuation has recently risen, at least according to Chrysalis Investments, a venture capital firm that marked its investment in Klarna up in October 2024. The move implies that Klarna is worth $14.6 billion.
7. Panera Bread
Panera Bread may finally be ready to come out of the oven after being taken private in 2017 by private equity firm JAB Holding. The bakery-restaurant chain — which also owns Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels — has been flirting with the idea for a while. JAB already tried to take Panera public via a SPAC in 2022, but the deal was called off. With some eight years of ownership already under its belt, the holding may be starting to get a bit stale for its owners. Panera was an investor favorite for many years before its acquisition, and growing restaurant franchises are among the most popular investments on Wall Street, so Panera will likely be a popular name whenever it does emerge.
Bottom line
After an improving IPO market in 2024, the IPO market may fare well in 2025, especially with some hot names on deck. That said, some threats could be on the horizon, such as President Trump’s tariffs, which could create substantial disruptions that could hurt a fragile IPO market.
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