The 10 biggest CVC IPOs planned for 2025 — and why they might not happen

There have been high hopes that 2025 would see a reopening of the window for stock market listings, which have been largely on hold since the boom in 2021 and 2022. A long line of late-stage venture backed companies — and their investors — are waiting for a chance to exit.

But recent market volatility may make things a little more complicated, says Jeff Baglio, a partner at law firm DLA Piper, who has over 30 years of experience on M&A transactions.

“I think the swirling volatility certainly makes timing a little more uncertain,” says Baglio, who will be discussing the exit market in a Spotlight Interview at the GCVI Summit today. “IPO markets don’t like volatility, and we’ve got a lot of volatility going on in pricing, along with all the geopolitical and macroeconomic stuff that’s going on from an uncertainty point of view.

“I think that all leads to questions on timing. You have a couple of big companies that are poised to go out in the second quarter, and I think it remains to be seen what the timing is going to be on the market here during the first half of the year.”

Funding levels have been creeping up in recent months along with the number of growth-stage companies with plans to go public. There were also some notably successful offerings last year, headlined by Reddit, which had seen its opening share price quadruple up to last month, as well as WeRide and ServiceTitan, which also recorded healthy gains. Baglio sees that as a significant factor in getting the IPO market restarted.

The problem is the state of the public markets themselves. They have had a tumultuous fortnight in the wake of a trade war that is continuing to escalate on the back of tariff threats between the US and its trading partners.

The news isn’t all bad, however, especially for tech companies.

“I think it’s still a highly anticipated market for big tech,” says Baglio, adding that there has been a keen interest for the larger tech companies to go public and revitalise the market, more or less since semiconductor producer Arm’s $4.9bn IPO in late 2023.

“I think people have been waiting to see big tech go and get good valuations, and that’s why most people are talking about companies like CoreWeave or Klarna that are in that space and poised to [float],” he adds. “That’s being viewed a bit as a bellwether for the IPO market.”

So, who are the corporate-backed startups most likely to make the leap in 2025? And who are the CVC investors that are set to benefit from those exits? Here’s a guide to some of the biggest names.

CoreWeave

Last valuation: $23bn (November 2024)

Corporate investors: Nvidia, Pure Storage, Zoom Ventures

CoreWeave looks to be first on the slate, having officially filed for a Nasdaq IPO at the start of this month. The GPU infrastructure provider was among the chipmakers given a huge boost by the artificial intelligence boom over the past two years, increasing its valuation tenfold to $23bn in just over 18 months. It expects to boost that to $35bn in the forthcoming offering. The company took in $1.9bn in revenue last year and Nvidia is its biggest corporate shareholder, with a 6% stake.

Klarna

Last valuation: $6.7bn (June 2022)

Corporate investors: Visa, H&M, Ant Group, Bonnier, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Bestseller, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Elsewhere in fintech, buy now, pay later app developer Klarna looks set to be the next after CoreWeave, having filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. The Swedish company’s valuation peaked at $46bn in 2021, only for it to be cut by 85% just months later amid rising default rates. However, it has steadied the ship by expanding into adjacent markets like ecommerce, and the IPO filing shows it moved into profit last year while increasing revenue 21% to over $2.1bn.

Chime

Last valuation: $25bn (August 2021)

Corporate investors: SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures

US-based banking app developer Chime has raised over $2bn in venture funding since it was founded in 2012, and a Forbes report last May indicated that it had 7 million monthly active users and $900m in capital still in reserve. CEO Chris Britt told the magazine he was targeting early 2025 for an IPO, and Bloomberg subsequently reported in December that it has confidentially filed to go public.

Gemini

Last valuation: $7.1bn (November 2021)

Corporate Investors: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Mogo

Coinbase remains the only cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US, but reports last week suggested Gemini could be about to join it, having confidentially filed for its own IPO. The offering could hypothetically take place this year, now that a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its operations has been dropped. Gemini was valued above $7bn in its last funding round, four years ago, but fluctuations in the valuations of both cryptocurrencies and companies (Coinbase’s market cap is barely half of what it was in January and six times what it was at the start of 2023) make it difficult to project the size of any flotation.

Jio Platforms

Last valuation: $107bn (January 2024)

Corporate investors: Google, Meta, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures

With the likes of OpenAI and SpaceX not having shown any interest in a public listing so far, Jio Platforms, the mobile network spun off by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, is the highest valued startup likely to float in 2025. Bank of America valued it at $107bn just over a year ago, a substantial hike from the $60bn valuation at which most of its corporate backers invested in 2020. Reliance oversaw an IPO for its Jio Financial subsidiary last year, and investment bank Jeffries said in a research note last July that it could do the same with Jio Platforms, also known as Reliance Jio, from early 2025.

Oyo

Last valuation: $3.8bn (November 2024)

Corporate investors: SoftBank Vision Fund, Airbnb, Didi, Hero Enterprise, Huazhu Hotels, Microsoft

Several other Indian unicorns are also in the frame for 2025 IPOs, including auto insurance marketplace CarDekho and online eyewear retailer Lenskart, but the biggest offering among the country’s app developers may be short-term accommodation provider Oyo. The company originally filed back in 2021 seeking a $12bn valuation, and then again two years later, but has been unable to make it to market. Oyo’s valuation has dropped but media reports earlier this month suggested a 2025 offering would be necessary to meet debt obligations of founder Ritesh Agarwal.

Airtable

Last valuation: $11bn (December 2021)

Corporate investors: Salesforce Ventures

App-building software provider Airtable hasn’t disclosed a new funding round since a $735m series F during the peak days of the covid-era boom, but it’s focus on low-code app creation makes it especially relevant in the wake of generative AI. The company released its first dedicated generative AI tool last July, and CEO Howie Liu told the media four months later that the company was cash-flow positive and looking towards this year for a possible flotation.

Xiaohongshu

Last valuation: $17bn (July 2024)

Corporate investors: Alibaba, Tencent

The IPO market may still be largely shut in the US, but China’s is a different matter, with Hong Kong in particular a destination for tech flotations. Chief among the candidates is Xiaohongshu, a social media platform billed as the country’s answer to Instagram. Media reports in December stated that it had chosen underwriters for a prospective offering in Hong Kong, on the back of revenues set to top $1bn for 2024. It was reportedly valued at $17bn in a secondary sale last July, a 50% increase from its last equity round in 2021.

Discord

Last valuation: $15bn (September 2021)

Corporate investors: Tencent, Warner Bros Discovery

Sources told the New York Times earlier this month that Discord has contacted banks looking to begin preparations for an offering that could take place this year. The messaging app developer has more than 200 million monthly active users and it will be encouraged that 2024’s most successful US offering was Reddit, another online social platform with a high user base. Its freemium model also makes it less reliant to potentially fluctuating advertising budgets than other social media companies.

Circle

Last valuation: $5bn (July 2024)

Corporate investors: Coinbase, Bitmain, Baidu, CreditEase, Wanxiang

Stablecoin provider Circle confidentially filed for an IPO in January 2024, having initially failed at a previous attempt to go public through a SPAC listing two years earlier. But, like Gemini, it has been awaiting the closure of an SEC investigation before pressing forward. Founder Jeremy Allaire said in October it is still committed to going public and has no plans to raise any more equity funding before it does so. Circle’s shares were trading on the secondary market at a valuation of about $5bn as of July last year, down from $9bn in early 2022.