IPO Mania Is Back Thanks to Figma, Circle and CoreWeave

Figma rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. (Courtesy Figma)

With apologies to fans of the late music legend Prince, the IPO market is beginning to party like it is 1999.

The strong debut for design software firm Figma on Thursday was the latest sign that investors can’t get enough of new stock market listings. Figma rose again Friday while the broader market slid following the weak jobs report. Figma finished the day up more than 5%.

Stablecoin company Circle Internet Group has soared nearly 500% since its initial public offering in June. Cloud computing and artificial intelligence firm CoreWeave, which went public in late March near the height of investor fears about tariffs and a potential trade war and initially struggled, has since become another AI market darling. Shares have more than doubled from their IPO price.

And those are just two of the bigger and most widely talked about IPOs. Ambiq Micro, a small chip company backed by Arm Holdings, also went public this week. Its debut may have been overshadowed a bit by Figma, but Ambiq Micro nearly doubled from its offering price.

Fintech Chime, space exploration company Voyager Technologies, drone maker AIRO and biotech Caris Life Sciences have also enjoyed solid gains since going public this summer.

Forget bulls and bears. It looks like it’s all about the unicorns on Wall Street. The stock market rebound since the Liberation Day-inspired selloff in April because of tariffs has led to renewed interest in more exciting, albeit riskier, new stocks.

“Heading into 2025, we had expected a lot more deals like this, before tariff volatility pushed back IPO timelines to the fall, and into 2026,” said Matt Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist with Renaissance Capital, an IPO research and investing firm, in an email to Barron’s about Figma.

“There’s a building consensus that the IPO window will fling open near the end of the quarter, and deals like Figma are setting the stage for that,” he added, saying that “the U.S. IPO market is in good shape.”

To that end, the Renaissance IPO exchange-traded fund, which invests in newly public stocks, is up 5% this year and has soared 40% from its low point of the year in early April.

According to Renaissance Capital, there have already been 123 IPOs priced this year as of Aug. 1, up 48% from the same period a year ago. What’s more, the pipeline is strong. Renaissance said that 139 companies have filed for IPOs this year, up 21% from a year ago. Some of those companies have already started trading. But the calendar still looks busy for the remainder of the year.

So it looks like the IPO window now is wide open, particularly for companies in dynamic industries like software, chipmaking and biotech.

“It is increasingly clear that investor optimism is on the rise for later-stage private innovation companies with differentiated business models and strong operating fundamentals,” said Christian Munafo, chief investment officer of Liberty Street Advisors and portfolio manager of the Private Shares Fund, in an email to Barron’s.

The resurgence of the Magnificent Seven trade, boosted by healthy results from Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Apple as well as optimism about Nvidia and AI, are helping too.

“Strong public megacap tech earnings are providing further tailwinds for these private innovators and disruptors as it becomes clearer how significant the AI revolution will be,” Munafo said.

With that in mind, what should investors be looking for next from the IPO market? Three decently sized offerings are on tap to debut the week of Aug. 4: space tech company Firefly Aerospace, medical imaging company Heartflow and data center operator WhiteFiber.

Kennedy told Barron’s that investors should keep an eye on buy now/pay later firm Klarna and ticket marketplace StubHub, which have already filed to go public. He also said that crypto exchanges Bullish and Gemini, options exchange Miami International, AI start-up Databricks and Figma competitor Canva are worth tracking as potential IPOs.

But it’s worth noting that not all IPOs are soaring. The recent debuts for educational publisher McGraw Hill, consumer research firm NIQ Global Intelligence and gold and copper miner Aura Minerals have been lackluster. Investors may be embracing some buzzy IPOs again, but companies in slower-growth and less dynamic industries may face challenges attracting interest from traders.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com