With Klarna now on tap for a public offering, the question arises: Who could be next?
Turns out there’s a pretty fat pipeline of venture-backed fintech startups that meet the basic criteria for an IPO. The list of likeliest suspects, however, includes many familiar names that have so far resisted the call of the public markets.
To illustrate, we used Crunchbase’s new forecasting tools to curate a list of a dozen venture-backed financial services startups that have generated buzz as potential IPO candidates.
Stripe and Chime are most heavily funded
It’s a global assortment, though the ones that have raised the most venture funding to date are U.S.-based. This includes the heaviest fundraiser — Stripe — which has famously faced down pressure to go public over the years, despite ranking as the highest valuation private fintech.
Stripe is also under no duress to raise capital through an IPO, having raised $6.5 billion two years ago in a Series I financing. And just last month, the South San Francisco-based fintech announced a tender offer for current and former employees shares that set a $91.5 billion valuation for the company.
Still, those of us who enjoy an action-packed IPO market can at least wish.
Digital bank Chime, the second-biggest fundraiser, is much further along the IPO path, having reportedly filed confidentially recently for a public offering. Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Chime has raised $2.3 billion in equity funding to date for its platform offering free accounts.
Crypto and blockchain unicorns
We’ve also got some crypto and blockchain-related companies on the list.
One is Circle, developer of USDC, a digital currency backed by the U.S. dollar. The 11-year-old company has raised at least $1.1 billion in known equity funding, and recently moved its headquarters from Boston to New York in advance of an anticipated IPO.
MoonPay, a Miami-based provider of payments infrastructure for crypto, is another on the IPO watchlist. It’s raised more than $650 million to date, and last week it acquired Iron, a stablecoin infrastructure startup. And San Francisco-based blockchain innovator Ripple has also reliably generated IPO buzz over the years.
Not just U.S.
Our list of fintech IPO candidates is also pretty international, with half headquartered outside the U.S.
Australia’s Airwallex is among the standouts, offering a popular global payments platform for businesses. To date, the Melbourne company has raised over $900 million in venture funding.
Two Jakarta-based unicorns — Akulaku Group and Xendit — also made the rankings, offering regional payment platforms. Out of the Philippines, meanwhile, payment platform Mynt has been scaling nicely, and attracted plentiful investor attention along the way.
Could 2025 be the year?
So, could 2025 finally be the year when we see a flurry of attention-getting fintech IPOs?
It would certainly be a welcome change. We haven’t seen much action for public offerings in this space since 2021 and early 2022.
Still, current market conditions are far from ideal, particularly with the contraction in leading tech stocks over recent weeks.
That said, for unicorns that do want to go public, the environment is never going to be perfect. Perhaps this is as good as it gets.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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