The IPO Pipeline Finally Gets Interesting

Any startup CEO can talk about future plans for going public. But until a company actually files for an IPO, it’s all just speculation.

We’re not talking about confidential filings either. Sure, they signal serious intent and contain valuable information for regulators. But for the rest of us, it’s the public S-1 filing that signifies an IPO is actually imminent.

By this latter measure, the past few weeks have been pretty busy for venture-backed startups. Cerebras Systems, the designer of speedy AI inference chips, filed publicly last week for an offering expected to raise around $2 billion. The Silicon Valley company, which withdrew plans for an IPO last fall, is reportedly seeking a valuation upwards of $35 billion this time around.

That alone would be enough to set IPO market watchers abuzz. Per Crunchbase data, it stands to be the largest initial share offering of a U.S. semiconductor company to date.

However, Cerebras wasn’t the only venture-backed company seeking a multibillion-dollar IPO valuation.

Power players

Another, albeit smaller, contender is nuclear power startup X-energy, which is making its debut today. The Rockville, Maryland-based company priced shares at $23 each late Thursday, above the projected range, raising around $1 billion. Shares closed up 27% in first-day trading Friday.

Meanwhile, on the geothermal power front, Fervo Energy is also looking to take its clean energy ambitions to the public market. The Houston-based company filed last week for a Nasdaq offering that Renaissance Capital estimates could bring in around $250 million.

Biotech IPOs heating up

Biotech is also heating up. Last week delivered a big debut from Kailera Therapeutics, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based developer of oral and injectable treatments for obesity and metabolic disease that raised $718 million in its Nasdaq offering. Alamar Biosciences, a Fremont, California-based startup applying proteomics to early disease detection, made its market entry as well, securing a current market cap around $1.6 billion.

More biotech debuts are on deck too. Austin-based Mobia Medical, a venture-backed developer of a nerve stimulation device for stroke survivors, filed last week for an offering. The prior week brought S-1 filings from Boston’s Seaport Therapeutics, a developer of medicines for depression, anxiety and other neuropsychiatric disorders, and Hemab, a Denmark-based biotech which focuses on treatment of blood coagulation disorders.

Space and defense on the rise

Of course, everyone knows the Texas-based company on deck to publicly file for a space tech offering of unprecedented magnitude. SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO a few weeks ago, with media reports pegging its target valuation around $1.75 trillion. If the company forges ahead with reported plans for a June market debut, a public filing should follow in the next few weeks.

In the interim, another, much, much smaller offering in the defense tech space is on track to hit the market much sooner. HawkEye 360, a Herndon, Virginia-based developer of radio frequency intelligence for military customers, filed earlier this month for a New York Stock Exchange offering. It comes amid a period of heightened investor appetite for defense tech, with an expectation of more debuts in the space likely in coming months.

Now we just need some software

Of course, it’s not an IPO market that is welcoming to all venture-backed startup sectors. One area noticeably absent from the impending offering list is enterprise software. While SaaS has long been a mainstay of the IPO pipeline, the sector has taken a hit of late amid investors’ concerns of AI disruption.

That said, it’s still encouraging to see a swathe of other sectors dipping a toe in IPO waters.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman