After a prolonged winter, the IPO market in 2025 has finally thawed, with companies from Chime to Figma to CoreWeave launching big debuts in the first eight months of the year. So, who’s next?

To help answer that question, we used Crunchbase’s predictive intelligence tools to curate a list of 14 venture-backed companies in sectors ranging from AI to fintech to consumer goods that could be on tap as IPO candidates in the foreseeable future. Some of them are known IPO hopefuls; others, more under-the-radar picks that nonetheless have strong credentials for a public-market launch. Let’s take a closer look.

Fintech

Stripe

There is perhaps no IPO more anticipated than that of payments giant Stripe. And, unsurprisingly, the fintech is “very likely” to go public, according to Crunchbase predictions.

However, Stripe seems to be doing so well as a private company that some people speculate it has no reason to take to the public markets. Stripe, which has dual headquarters in San Francisco and Ireland, is not only the most-valuable fintech in the world, it’s one of the most-valuable private companies, period. But instead of going public, it’s thus far been offering early investors and employees liquidity through secondary sales. In February, for example, Stripe announced a tender offer in which investors would buy up shares from current and former employees at a valuation of $91.5 billion. Stripe passed the $1.4 trillion total payment volume threshold in 2024. Says F-Prime: “There are no perfectly reliable sources for Stripe’s revenue, but some sources estimate they surpassed $16B in 2023.”

Since its 2010 inception, Stripe has raised more than $9 billion in funding from investors such as General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures. Whether it finally decides to take the plunge into the public markets remains to be seen, but if it does, there is no doubt its filing will be devoured by media and fintech enthusiasts alike.

Airwallex

Airwallex, a Singapore-based global payments and financial platform, is also “very likely” to go public, per Crunchbase predictions. CEO Jack Zhang has stated that the plan is to have Airwallex make its public market debut by the end of 2026, although the company is reportedly “not in a rush” to list. Interestingly, Airwallex rejected a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from Stripe in 2018. And that probably wasn’t a bad move. Founded in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia, the Stripe competitor has raised more than $1.2 billion in funding and was valued at over $6.2 billion as of its last raise — a $300 million Series F in May 2025 that included $150 million in secondary share transfers. Investors include Sequoia Capital, HSG, Blackbird Ventures, Hillhouse Investment and Salesforce Ventures 1, among others.

In August 2024, CNBC reported that Airwallex had reached an annual revenue run rate of $500 million after seeing major growth in its North American and European businesses. In announcing its Series F, the company projected that it was “on track to hit $1 billion in annualized revenue in 2025, as businesses of all sizes look to expand globally without friction.” That follows its achievement of $720 million in annualized revenue in March, up 90% year over year, according to the company. It touts more than 150,000 customers globally, including Bill, Bird, Brex, Deel, Rippling, Navan, Qantas and ZipHQ.

— Mary Ann Azevedo

Enterprise tech and AI

Cerebras Systems

We know that AI chip company Cerebras, founded in 2016 by Andrew Feldman, has been gearing up to go public. The Sunnyvale, California-based company filed with the SEC to go public at the end of 2024. It then delayed its offering due to regulatory scrutiny over its ties to UAE-based G42, which has since been cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The company is considered a “probable” IPO candidate by Crunchbase. In its filing, Cerebras noted its dependence on a single customer, Group 42, a subsidiary of its investor G42, responsible for more than 80% of revenue in 2023 and the first half of 2024. Cerebras has built a larger chip that is 10x faster for AI training and inference compared to leading GPU solutions, according to the company. Its customers include Mistral AI, Perplexity and the Mayo Clinic. Cerebras is reported to be raising $1 billion in funding which could delay its plans to go public. Still, the market conditions are good for an AI chip company. Nvidia has topped $4 trillion in value and Astera Labs, which went public in March 2024 at $36 per share, has doubled its price from mid-July to mid-August to over $180.

Databricks

Databricks, at the center of AI and data, is a strong candidate to go public in the next year. The San Francisco-based company is one of the 10 most-valuable private companies in the world, with a reported $3 billion in revenue run rate as of Jan. 31, and on track to deliver positive free cash flow. In December, Databricks raised a $10 billion funding, the largest round in 2024, which valued it at $62 billion. The 12-year-old company has also been on a buying spree, notably purchasing AI infrastructure builder MosaicML in 2023, data management service Tabular in 2024, and sql database solution developer Neon in 2025, each at $1 billion or more. Crunchbase indicates it’s a “probable” IPO candidate.

— Gené Teare

Clay

Clay sits at the red-hot intersection of AI and marketing and is a “probable” IPO candidate, per Crunchbase predictions. Its growth metrics and scale seem to support that outlook, with the company projecting $100 million in 2025 revenue — triple its 2024 figure. It has likewise tripled its valuation in just over a year from $500 million to $3.1 billion in a $100 million Series C raise last month. The New York-based startup, founded in 2017, is reportedly nearing profitability. It’s backed by IPO-savvy investors including CapitalG, Meritech Capital Partners and Sequoia Capital, further bolstering its public-market credentials. The company claims to have invented the “GTM (go-to-market) engineering role,” which CEO and co-founder Kareem Amin has described as “the first true AI-native profession.”

— Marlize van Romburgh

Cybersecurity

Ledger

Crypto wallet startup Ledger is “very likely” to IPO, according to Crunchbase predictions. That makes sense, as the French startup, founded in 2014, is well-positioned at the intersection of two currently hot industries: cybersecurity and blockchain. Paris-based Ledger offers a hardware wallet to secure crypto private keys. It has raised some $577 million from venture investors including Molten Ventures and Samsung Ventures, per Crunchbase. CEO Pascal Gauthier told European tech publication Sifted in June that Ledger is actively thinking about a U.S. stock market debut, likely within the next three years. It also has plans to expand beyond crypto security into cybersecurity more broadly. While he didn’t disclose revenue figures, Gauthier said Ledger has sold 8 million of its devices to date and estimated that 20% of the world’s crypto assets are protected via the company’s wallets. “Our size is compatible with an IPO,” he said. “That’s a short-medium term vision.”

1Password

It’s “probable” that security startup 1Password will go public, according to Crunchbase’s prediction model. That makes sense, given the Toronto-based startup’s disclosed financials. The company was founded in 2005 and bootstrapped for its first 14 years before receiving its first outside investment from Accel in 2019. It’s gone on to raise $920.1 million total from venture investors, per Crunchbase. Its most recent raise was in 2022, when it landed a $6.2 billion valuation in a $620 million Iconiq Growth-led round. While 1Password hasn’t raised since then, it likely hasn’t needed to: Co-CEO David Faugno told CRN in February that the company has been profitable since the get-go and now has more than 150,000 customers, with 75% of its business selling to enterprises. While the company hasn’t made any formal moves toward an IPO, Faugno told CRN that “we do believe that this platform and this company can be a very large, standalone business. And we do believe that public markets are a likely stop on that journey, and an accelerator of that journey.”

Tanium

Tanium, founded in 2007, is a frequent guest on IPO predictions lists, our own included. That’s likely because the endpoint management startup has raised a whopping $1 billion from private-market investors including Franklin Templeton, Andreessen Horowitz, TPG, Wellington Management and IVP. It has also disclosed big revenue numbers to boot, telling Forbes that ARR topped $700 million in 2024 and that it had free cash flow margins north of 10%, making it profitable on an EBITDA basis. The company’s most recent funding-round valuation is $9 billion, though that dates to 2021. But trading on secondary-market platforms including Forge has reportedly valued the company lower — around $4 billion — more recently. Kirkland, Washington-based Tanium hasn’t disclosed going-public plans, and CEO Dan Streetman — brought on last year to take over from co-founder Orion Hindawi — told Forbes “we feel very comfortable as a private company.” Still, if it were to pursue an IPO, Tanium may see a receptive market following data security platform Rubrik’s successful IPO last year.

— Marlize van Romburgh

Consumer startups

Madison Reed

Founded in 2013, hair-color brand Madison Reed has had quite some time to build up a following, and it continues to expand its reach. Launched as an online brand, it also currently sells in brick-and-mortar stores and operates a network of  hair color bars. Co-founded and led by Amy Errett, a longtime consumer-focused partner at VC firm True Ventures, the San Francisco-headquartered company has raised over $220 million in equity funding as well as $50 million in debt financing. Crunchbase grades it as a “probable” IPO candidate.

Skims

Skims, the shapewear brand co-founded by Kim Kardashian in 2019, has expanded its way into a host of product lines including sleepwear and activewear in addition to its core shapewear offerings. Funding has followed. The company has raised more than $700 million in seed and venture investment and attracted a host of well-known backers, including Thrive Capital and Wellington Management. It also has a knack for staying in the news, boosted of late by a controversial sculpting face wrap. Could an IPO be next? Crunchbase predicts that move is “probable.”

— Joanna Glasner

Quince

It’s unusual, to say the least, for a D2C clothing retailer to land on an IPO watch list like this one in the year 2025, but Quince is the exception. The San Francisco-based startup is a “probable” IPO candidate, per Crunchbase, a prediction likely fueled by its reportedly fast revenue growth, back-to-back funding deals, and strong brand appeal among Gen Z and millennials. The company has raised more than $260 million from investors to date, not yet including an in-the-works $200 million Iconiq Capital-led Series D that would reportedly value the company at more than $4.5 billion — double its year-earlier valuation. Quince bucks the trend when it comes to fashion startups, which have seen venture investment fall off precipitously since the peak year of 2023.

— Marlize van Romburgh

Health/biotech

Commure

Mountain View, California-based Commure, a provider of AI-enabled software for health systems and clinicians, has raised more than $800 million in venture funding to date, including a $200 million June round led by General Catalyst, per Crunchbase data. The company also touts that its ARR, in the hundreds of millions, has doubled for three consecutive years. Those sound like the kind of metrics that IPO investors like, and Crunchbase says a listing is a probable outcome.

Inari is hoping to pioneer technology for seeds that will enable plants to make the most efficient use of land, water and fertilizer. Founded in 2016, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company has raised more than $720 million in equity funding to date, including a $144 million January financing. In terms of IPO potential, it helps that the company is employing two hot technologies: AI-powered predictive design and multiplex gene editing. Inari is another probable IPO candidate according to Crunchbase.

— Joanna Glasner

Defense/spach tech

Sierra Space

Sierra Space is firmly on the IPO radar. The company, named a “very likely” IPO candidate by Crunchbase, commands more than $3.4 billion in contracts (including with NASA) and has raised $1.7 billion in total venture investment at a $5.3 billion valuation from heavyweights including General Atlantic and BlackRock. The company has several marquee projects advancing, which include its Dream Chaser spaceplane and Orbital Reef commercial station. It also enjoys the benefit of an increasingly bullish market for space and defense startups, which have raised robust venture investment this year. The sector has already seen a successful 2025 IPO in the form of Firefly Aerospace’s August public-market debut — could Sierra be next?

— Marlize van Romburgh

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Methodology

Crunchbase’s IPO predictions utilize Crunchbase data — including funding and valuation, and milestones such as financial growth, key leadership hires, market share expansion and headcount growth — to forecast the likelihood of a private company launching an IPO, providing a probability score and its supporting evidence. Read more about Crunchbase’s Predictions & Insights and its methodology for IPO predictions here.

Illustration: Dom Guzman