Although 2024 was another exceptionally lackluster year for new public offerings, the IPO market could gain momentum in 2025 after its three-year lull. Yes, many large private companies still have stockpiles of capital that have helped tide them over in recent years as they wait for the public markets to improve, but eventually every venture-backed startup needs to exit, whether it be through an acquisition or in a public-market debut.
With that in mind, here are 13 companies that the Crunchbase News team thinks could be top contenders to go public if our 2025 market forecast bears out.
Enterprise tech and AI
Cerebras Systems: Yes, this one is kind of cheating. Cerebras should likely already be public. It filed to go public openly in September. That made sense. However, in early October it was reported Cerebras was postponing its IPO after facing delays with a U.S. national security review on UAE-based G42‘s minority investment in the AI chipmaker. Nevertheless, it seems almost certain to go public soon. It’s a good time to be an AI chip developer. Nvidia has become one of the most — if not the most — valuable companies in the world and venture funding is currently gaining traction in the sector, with investors continuing to pour money in. Finally, Astera Labs — which provides data and memory connectivity solutions for some of the biggest chipmakers in the world — had a successful IPO even though its shares have tailed off its highs. It seems right that another chip startup will try to right those tailwinds. We thought it might be Groq, but a likely fresh $300 million will probably keep it off the public market for a while.
CoreWeave: AI cloud platform CoreWeave was super busy last year. In May, it raised a whopping $1.1 billion in a fresh funding round led by Coatue in a deal valuing the company at $19 billion, per The Wall Street Journal. Then just weeks later, CoreWeave locked up a $7.5 billion debt facility from the likes of Blackstone, Magnetar Capital and Coatue. It didn’t stop there, picking up another $650 million debt facility. The company wanted the cash as AI continued to grow and CoreWeave was able to ride that wave. The startup gives access to the highly sought after AI chips from Nvidia through its more than two dozen data centers. In November it was reported CoreWeave was aiming for a valuation of more than $35 billion in an initial public offering that is expected in 2025. It seems well positioned to make that happen.
Snyk: While many are waiting for cloud security startup Wiz to go public after its big $1 billion raise at a $12 billion valuation last year, we are going to look at another cyber firm with Israeli roots. Early last year, application security developer Snyk reported it grew its revenue by 50% to $220 million in 2023, while also cutting its losses by 33%, according to the company’s Directors’ Report filed with the U.K.’s Companies House. That may help put its long-rumored IPO back on track — especially after fellow cyber firm Rubrik went public last year. In late 2022, Snyk raised a $196.5 million Series G led by Qatar Investment Authority at a $7.4 billion valuation. That was a 13% drop from September 2021, when the company — which has now raised about $1 billion — closed a $530 million Series F co-led by Sands Capital Ventures and Tiger Global Management at an $8.5 billion valuation.
SymphonyAI: SymphonyAI made our list six months ago and we feel even more confident 2025 is the year. In November, the company hired five-time CFO Ravi Narula, who helped lead Ooma, Gigamon and BigBand Networks to their initial public offering, so it’s safe to assume he is being tasked with the same goal here. SymphonyAI also has already been talking to banks about a public offering. The Palo Alto, California-based company, which has reached both a $500 million revenue run rate and profitability, offers predictive AI across a variety of industries to help forecast things such as product demand. SymphonyAI was founded by Romesh Wadhwani, PhD, in 2017. In 2002, prior to founding SymphonyAI, Wadhwani founded Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm investing in software and technology-enabled services companies. With investors craving all things AI — likely including predictive AI — the timing may be right for SymphonyAI. We’ve been following the company for a while here at Crunchbase News, and the second half of the year could see it finally IPO.
— Chris Metinko
Fintech and banking
Stripe: Several large fintech unicorns are among the contenders to go public in the foreseeable future. But Stripe — arguably the most highly anticipated IPO for the past several years — might not be among the 2025 offerings. Still, we’re including the payments giant here because Stripe has made all the right moves in recent years to signal that it’s eyeing the public markets — it just may not have to do so just yet. The 14-year-old company, co-headquartered in Dublin and San Francisco, was most recently valued at $65 billion in early 2024, and crossed the threshold of processing more than $1 trillion in payment volume in 2023. The company hired Steffan Tomlinson, a seasoned CFO, in 2023, and has released an annual letter for the past two years. It raised $6.5 billion in March 2023 to provide liquidity to former and current employees with tax obligations, and offered a tender offer for employees to sell shares at a value of $65 billion in February 2024. The company stated it is robustly cash-flow positive in its 2023 letter. With its strong financial position and by addressing employee liquidity, Stripe has removed immediate time pressure to go public and, for now, the fintech company is staying mum about its IPO plans. But we’re watching closely for further IPO clues nonetheless.
Klarna: Meanwhile, buy now, pay later service, Klarna has filed confidentially to go public. The Stockholm-based company will be 20 years old this year. It was last valued at $6.7 billion in a July 2022 funding, though that shaved 86% off the $45.5 billion valuation it had notched just a year earlier. Klarna reported revenue of $1.2 billion in H1 2024 — up 27% from H1 2023 — and an adjusted operating profit of $62 million. The company says it has sharply reduced customer service costs through the use of AI. Klarna, which launched in the U.S. in 2015, signaled that its U.S.-based revenue grew by 38% in H1 2024 compared to the same period a year earlier. U.S.-based competitor Affirm went public in early 2021 and is valued at $21.6 billion as of Dec. 12, with its most recent quarterly revenue totaling $698 million.
Revolut: The third most-valuable fintech on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, Revolut is a strong contender to go public. The U.K.-based mobile banking services company increased revenue in 2023 to $2.2 billion and reported profits of $545 million. The company is the youngest among the fintechs we list here, approaching its 10th year in 2025. Its earliest lead investors were Balderton Capital and Index Ventures. For comparison, the largest public neobank, Brazil-based Nubank, went public in December 2021 and saw its shares surge around 45% in 2024.
— Gené Teare
Health and biotech
Hinge Health: This is another IPO prediction where we’re not exactly going out on a limb (pun intended in this case). Physical therapy startup Hinge Health hired Morgan Stanley to lead an early-2025 IPO, Business Insider reported in September. The San Francisco-based company offers virtual physical therapy services and was last valued at $6.2 billion in a $600 million Series E in 2021 led by Tiger Global and Coatue. The startup has raised more than $826 million total from venture investors since its founding in 2014, per Crunchbase. Along with bringing on investment bankers in preparation for an IPO, Hinge Health — like other startups hoping to take a swing at the public markets in the current investment climate — reportedly has also been working to shore up its finances and become cash-flow positive, moves that included laying off 10% of its workforce earlier in 2024.
— Marlize van Romburgh
Element Biosciences: Venture-backed biotech startups generally go public earlier than their tech counterparts. And so by industry standards, 7-year-old Element Biosciences, with $678 million in equity funding to date, looks ripe for an offering. The San Diego-based company, which focuses on genetic analysis tools for the research market, most recently pulled in a $277 million Series D last summer that included backing from prominent pre-IPO investors Fidelity and T. Rowe Price. Its DNA sequencer lines compete with industry giant Illumina.
— Joanna Glasner
Retail, travel and consumer
Navan: Navan is the new Instacart. The corporate travel and expense-tracking platform, formerly known as TripActions, is the company that is always, definitely about to go public. And yet, it remains private. As background, for years, we predicted Instacart would IPO, until finally in 2023 that happened. For Navan, we’re saying 2025 will be the year for the 9-year-old company, which reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO back in 2022. (Yes, we know we said it would go public last year as well. But, hey, cut us a break.) There are concrete signs Navan is gearing up for a market debut. For one, last summer it hired the former CFO of the New York Stock Exchange as its finance chief. Navan also disclosed last summer that travel bookings were up nearly 2x from year-earlier levels.
— Joanna Glasner
StubHub: Online ticketing marketplace StubHub has reportedly been contemplating an IPO for some time, especially as concerts and other live events have returned after the pandemic. CNBC reported in April that the San Francisco-based company was making plans for a summer 2024 IPO, aiming for a valuation of at least $16.5 billion — a sharp increase from the $4.05 billion co-founder Eric Baker‘s new company, Viagogo, paid when it took StubHub off of eBay‘s hands in 2020, but roughly in line with its valuation during its most recent private funding. But by July, StubHub reportedly had postponed its IPO plans until after Labor Day due to stagnant market conditions. Still, it quietly hired a CFO — Connie James, who previously worked in that position at publicly traded Light & Wonder — The Information reported in August. As of the end of 2024, we’re not aware of any further reporting about timing for a possible StubHub IPO, but it seems like a reasonable bet that if market conditions are indeed favorable in 2025, the company will again mark its calendar for an offering.
Discord: Discord will be a decade old this year. In that time, it has raised nearly $1 billion from private investors including Benchmark, Tencent, Greylock, Spark Capital, Index Ventures, Greenoaks and Sony Interactive Entertainment. The San Francisco-based company is a popular communication platform initially tailored for gamers that has since expanded to host other online communities. It most recently raised private funding in a $500 million Series H led by Dragoneer Investment Group in late 2021 that reportedly came with a $15 billion valuation attached. In what could be seen as IPO prep, Discord has also been working to diversify its revenue streams, including the introduction of gamified advertising products like Video Quests, which reward users for engaging with video ads. It’s a somewhat similar approach to Reddit‘s moves ahead of its IPO last year. Reddit started diversifying its revenue streams through targeted advertising and data licensing for large AI language models, changes that helped the popular online discussion platform narrow its losses and move closer to profitability ahead of its successful IPO in March 2024.
— Marlize van Romburgh
Miscellaneous
Canva: Design-software maker Canva was on this list in 2023, and everyone knows that if you keep making the same prediction again and again, eventually you’ll be right. But this time, the Sydney, Australia-based startup has dropped a big clue that an IPO really is in the cards for 2025: In November, it hired Kelly Steckelberg, the CFO who helped to take Zoom public, as its first finance chief. The company has raised a whopping $2.5 billion from investors — including Bond, Felicis 1, General Catalyst, Dragoneer Investment Group, T. Rowe Price, Coatue and Iconiq Capital — and was recently valued at $32 billion in a secondary sale. Canva, which competes with Adobe’s suite of image editing and graphic design software, says it generates about $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and has been profitable for seven years — numbers that no doubt would pique public market investors’ interest.
— Marlize van Romburgh
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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