Figma’s sensational IPO final week resurrected longstanding debates about IPO pricing and first day pops—an unsurprising response to the newly listed inventory’s 333% surge in its first days of buying and selling. As buyers dissect the providing (and as Figma’s inventory settles again a bit, falling 27% on Monday), different key questions have emerged: Will Figma’s debut entice different startups to leap into the fray, bringing an finish to the tech business’s IPO drought? And if that’s the case, who’s subsequent?
There’s a protracted checklist of late-stage VC-backed tech corporations with robust buyer bases that Wall Road funding bankers would like to take public. Many of those multi-billion greenback corporations, together with Databricks, Klarna, Stripe, and SpaceX, have been topics of IPO hypothesis for years. After which after all, there’s the crop of richly valued AI startups, from OpenAI and Anthropic, to Elon Musk’s xAI.
These corporations will probably proceed to be within the highlight, however in conversations I had with a number of buyers following Figma’s debut, different names got here up as extra more likely to IPO sooner together with Canva, Revolut, Midjourney, Motive, and Anduril.
“Having constructive IPOs is an efficient sign for everyone,” says Kirsten Inexperienced, founder and managing accomplice at Forerunner Ventures, whose portfolio firm Chime not too long ago went public and skilled a 37% pop in inventory value on its first day of buying and selling. (Forerunner additionally has investments in public firm Hims & Hers and late stage personal corporations together with Oura.) “I consider we must always revisit this concept: an IPO is the Sequence A of being within the public market–and having that basically be a motivator to folks’s willingness, and possibly even eagerness to go public.” (As if on cue, HeartFlow, a medical know-how firm, filed an S-1 for its IPO at a $1.3 billion valuation on August 1).
Kyle Stanford, the director of analysis on US enterprise capital at PitchBook, notes that simply 18 venture-backed corporations have gone public via June 30 of this yr. This, he says, is an element of coverage uncertainties that translate to funding headwinds in addition to the overfunding that occurred in 2021 that continues to stymie enterprise capital. “Figma hopefully begins to interrupt the dam, nevertheless it’s been a fairly sluggish quarter,” he says.
Although Figma, which makes design software program, is worthwhile and has a robust set of built-in AI capabilities, these qualities are usually not important to corporations certain for IPO success, says Stanford. He says that buyers would like corporations to generate a minimal of $200 million in income that grows at excessive charges and prioritize constructive free money circulate over profitability. Having an AI story can be “essential,” except the corporate could be very excessive development and worthwhile by broad margins.
Canva could also be a most-compelling case because it’s a design firm with related fundamentals to that of Figma, stated a number of buyers I interviewed. Design collaboration firm Canva has raised about $589 million over 18 rounds at a $32 billion valuation, larger than that of Figma’s on the time of its IPO. “Canva is a giant winner in relation to what occurred yesterday with Figma,” says Jason Shuman, an investor at Major Ventures. Shuman, who will not be an investor in Canva, factors to Canva’s $3 billion annual income and 35% year-over-year development as indicators of its enterprise’ sturdiness.
Others agree. “Canva—after Figma, holy crap—they’re going to attempt to IPO as quickly as doable,” says Felix Wang, Managing Director and Companion at Hedgeye Danger Administration, who will not be a Canva investor. Canva, which was not too long ago valued at $37 billion throughout a share purchase again, didn’t reply to Fortune’s request for remark.
Wang and others be aware that the surge in Figma’s value is, in some ways, not truly pushed by Figma. Slightly, the market is at an all-time excessive, inflicting retail dealer demand for corporations new to market. “They don’t even know this firm, however they realize it’s a brand new firm,” says Wang of retail merchants investing in Figma. “They’re going to place some cash into it, after which, extra apparently: they’re going to point out it off on social media.”
As Figma is to Canva; NuBank is to Revolut, causes Major’s Shuman. He seems to be at fintech NuBank, which is up round 13% from its early 2025 IPO and thinks that Revolut, which has a really related enterprise mannequin, might copycat. Revolut informed Fortune in an announcement: “our focus will not be on if or after we IPO, however on persevering with to increase the enterprise, constructing new merchandise, and offering higher and cheaper providers to serve our rising world buyer base.”
One other potential IPO candidate within the near-future is chipmaker Cerebras, says Major’s Shuman, who invests in vertical AI, B2B, SMB and finance and protection corporations however has no stake in Cerebras or Revolut. (Cerebras filed an S-1 in September 2024 however its IPO was delayed by regulators involved a few $335 million funding by UAE-based G42. Now, it’s been cleared by regulators for a public market itemizing, however the firm has held off on an IPO because it fundraises $1 billion, studies The Data.)
Many corporations, together with the most important and hottest personal firm OpenAI (which simply nabbed a $300 billion valuation, per the New York Occasions), have important incentives to stay personal. It is because they will keep away from public scrutiny that arises from disclosures required of public corporations and have entry to important personal capital for liquidity infusions which are typically important.
But, the truth that behemoths like OpenAI, Stripe ($91 billion valuation) and SpaceX ($400 billion valuation) are personal could even be a hidden price for the general public market. “I’m going to get philosophical,” says Forerunner’s Inexperienced. “A part of the general public market was created so the broader inhabitants might take part within the economic system and within the development of the economic system; it wasn’t meant to take a seat in a couple of folks’s fingers.”
One behemoth could also be getting into the inventory market limelight. Anduril, the protection tech firm that nabbed a $30.5 billion valuation on its Sequence G, has incentives to stay personal because of the nature of its enterprise. However Pitchbook’s Stanford predicts it to be the subsequent tech IPO. Along with Anduril’s CEO asserting it’s going to “positively” turn out to be publicly traded, its worth proposition is core to Trump Administration priorities in safety and protection, which might make it a scorching choose for buyers, Stanford causes.
“Apart from that,” he says the checklist of potential IPO candidates as of late is lengthy: “There’s in all probability about 300 different corporations that it could possibly be.”
