Analysis
The IPO pipeline keeps filling faster than it empties. In a recent 48-hour stretch, nine new S-1 registration statements landed with the SEC, according to Pulse's own tracking of this quarter's IPO pipeline -- which found the week before had produced just one pricing, worth $100 million, before TRex Bio and Retension Pharmaceuticals priced two smaller deals in the days that followed.
That's not a new problem. Last quarter's private venture funding, by region:
- North America -- $92 billion.
- Europe -- $25 billion.
- Combined -- roughly $117 billion, more capital than the entire public IPO pipeline is likely to return to investors this year.
“Last quarter's private venture funding, by region: - North America -- $92 billion.”
Private markets keep absorbing the companies public markets aren't ready to price.
The pricing hesitation has a recent, concrete cause: Firmus, the Nvidia-backed data-center developer, withdrew its roughly $31 billion-valuation Australian IPO the same day it was due to publish its prospectus, citing market turbulence. A deal that size failing to clear makes underwriters more conservative about the next large listing, even as smaller biotech and specialty names keep filing behind it.
For VCs and LPs, the math is blunt: nine fresh S-1s is a healthy-looking pipeline on paper, but a pricing calendar that produced just one deal before this filing wave means most of that cohort is still waiting for a market willing to clear it. Until the pricing count catches up with the filing count, the IPO window stays open in name more than in practice.