IPO Statistics (2026)

After a brutal drought in 2022-2023, going public came back into fashion. Renaissance Capital counted 202 traditional US IPOs in 2025 raising $44.0 billion, a 35% jump in deal count and a 49% jump in proceeds over 2024's 150 deals and $29.6 billion.

Broader trackers that also count SPACs and micro-cap listings put the 2025 total higher, at 347 IPOs (stockanalysis.com). Either way, the direction was up: 2025 was the busiest and best-funded year since the 2021 boom, though still a fraction of that record.

IPO volume is famously cyclical, swinging with the market's appetite for risk. The count exploded to a record 1,035 US IPOs in 2021, then collapsed to 181 in 2022 and just 154 in 2023 as rate hikes shut the window, before recovering to 225 in 2024 and 347 in 2025 (see the chart and table below).

Note the two counting conventions. The broad chart includes SPACs and tiny deals; Renaissance Capital's headline numbers strip those out, which is why its 2025 count (202) sits below the all-in figure (347). Both tell the same cyclical story from different starting points.

Proceeds swing even harder than deal counts, because a handful of mega-deals dominate the dollars. Renaissance-tracked IPOs raised $142.4 billion in 2021, cratered to just $7.7 billion in 2022, then climbed back to $19.4 billion (2023), $29.6 billion (2024), and $44.0 billion in 2025.

That 2025 total returned the market to roughly its pre-Covid norm. Carson Group notes IPO volume in 2025 was nearly double 2024's level and back in line with the 2017-2019 average, a sign of normalization rather than a new boom.

The "IPO pop" is the jump from the offer price to the first-day closing price, and it has varied wildly by era. It averaged about 7.4% in the 1980s, roughly 15% in the mid-1990s, then a stunning 65% during the 1999-2000 internet bubble before settling near 17.5% across 2001-2023 (see the chart below).

In 2025 the pop averaged 29.3% by Jay Ritter's count (Renaissance pegs it even higher, around 35%), the biggest first-day gains in a decade. The 46-year average from 1980 to 2025 is 19.0%, so 2025 ran hot but not bubble-hot.

A big first-day pop is not free money for the company. "Money left on the table" measures the first-day gain multiplied by the shares sold: value that flowed to day-one buyers instead of the issuer. In 2025 that figure hit about $13.1 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2024 and $1.9 billion in 2023 (see the table below).

That is the paradox of a hot IPO. A 200% pop looks like a triumph in the headlines, but it means the company sold its shares far too cheaply and left enormous sums on the table, wealth captured by the banks' favored clients who got day-one allocations.

The pop is not spread evenly. Technology IPOs consistently jump the most: Ritter's data shows tech deals averaged about 41% first-day returns in 2024 and 33% in 2025, far outpacing non-tech offerings, which reflects the higher uncertainty and hype around fast-growing software and AI names.

2025 made the point vividly. Design-software company Figma popped about 250% on its first day and stablecoin issuer Circle jumped 168%, while AI-cloud firm CoreWeave, a much larger deal, closed its debut roughly flat. Bigger, more mature offerings tend to pop less.

Here is the catch that day-one headlines hide. Jay Ritter's landmark 1991 study of 1,526 IPOs found that buying at the first-day close and holding three years returned just 34.5%, versus 61.9% for matched seasoned firms: about 83 cents of wealth per dollar compared with a control stock.

Updated work still finds IPOs lagging size-matched benchmarks by roughly 2% a year, though the effect is concentrated in hot-market vintages and is debated methodologically. The practical lesson holds: the pop rewards the allocated few, while ordinary buyers chasing the stock after it opens have historically underperformed.

IPO records keep getting broken. The all-time list was rewritten in 2026 when SpaceX raised about $75 billion, followed by SK hynix at $26.5 billion, leapfrogging Alibaba's $21.8 billion 2014 debut, which had held the US crown for over a decade (see the table below).

Below those sit Visa ($17.9B, 2008), Enel ($16.5B, 1999), Facebook ($16.0B, 2012), and General Motors ($15.8B, 2010). Note these are nominal and pre-greenshoe; Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion 2019 deal was larger still but listed in Riyadh, not on a US exchange.

2025's marquee names spanned energy, AI, and fintech. LNG exporter Venture Global raised $1.75 billion in January, the year's largest first-half deal, and AI-cloud provider CoreWeave raised $1.5 billion in March, the biggest US tech IPO since 2021 (see the table below).

The most explosive debuts were smaller. Circle priced at $31 and later traded up more than 230%, and Figma popped about 250% on day one. Klarna, Chime, and eToro also went public, though several 2025 pops later gave back big gains, echoing the 2021 hangover.

No corner of the IPO world boomed and busted harder than SPACs (special-purpose acquisition companies, or blank-check firms). SPAC IPOs surged to about 614 deals raising roughly $149 billion in 2021, then collapsed to 86 in 2022 and just 31 in 2023 as the froth evaporated (see the chart and table below).

2024-2025 brought a cautious comeback: 56 SPAC IPOs in 2024 and 144 in 2025, raising about $25.8 billion. The rebound is real but a shadow of the mania, and today's sponsors are structuring deals with better investor protections than the 2021 vintage.

The bust was worst for investors who held the merged companies. The De-SPAC Index fell about 45% in 2021 alone, and mergers completed during the 2021 wave lost roughly two-thirds of their value relative to the standard $10 SPAC trust price.

Academic studies confirm the pattern: de-SPAC companies have posted average one-year returns of roughly negative 8% to negative 14% versus benchmarks. The dilution baked into SPAC structures, warrants, sponsor promotes, and redemptions, left ordinary shareholders holding the losses.

The US is not the whole story. Globally, EY counted 1,293 IPOs raising $171.8 billion in 2025, a 39% jump in proceeds on a roughly flat deal count, as the market shifted toward larger, higher-quality offerings (see the table below).

India led the world by number of deals, while the US led by dollars raised, followed by Hong Kong and India. Private-equity-backed IPOs were just 8% of deals but 36% of proceeds, a reminder that sponsor-backed mega-listings drive the money even when they are rare.

Why do companies routinely sell shares below what the market will pay? Underwriters argue a first-day pop rewards investors for the risk of buying an unproven stock and builds momentum, and that leaving something on the table keeps big institutional buyers coming back for the next deal.

Critics, Ritter foremost among them, counter that persistent underpricing enriches the banks' favored clients at the issuer's expense. The gap widened during hot markets like 1999-2000 and again in 2020-2021, which is why direct listings and auctions periodically get floated as fairer alternatives.

For most investors the lesson is patience. The eye-catching pop goes to those who receive an allocation at the offer price, not to the public buying once the stock opens, and history shows freshly public companies tend to lag the broad market over the following few years.

That does not mean IPOs are off-limits, only that chasing a hot debut on day one is closer to speculation than investing. A steadier approach is to let a newly public company report a few quarters as a public company, judge it on fundamentals, and size any position as part of a diversified plan rather than a lottery ticket.