As the Financial Times (FT) reported Saturday (Sept. 13), seven large-cap companies went public last week, including buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Klarna, cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, and blockchain platform Figure Technology Solutions.
These and other deals raised upwards of $4 billion, the report said, bolstering the hopes of bankers who have been waiting for an IPO rebound following a drought extended by tariff-related market upheaval.
“In addition to the relative stability requisite for a healthy IPO market, the pent-up demand from the sell side, the buy side, the founders and the private equity groups was real and almost aching,” said Marc Jaffe, New York office managing partner at the law firm Latham and Watkins, which worked on four of last week’s listings.
The report also noted that the companies saw a generally positive reception. Figure jumped 28% while another company that listed, Black Rock Coffee Bar, saw its shares climb 38%.
“Outcomes have been strong, and if this market backdrop holds, total U.S. IPO volumes are on track to exceed last year,” Sumit Mukherjee, head of equity capital markets, market intelligence, at JPMorgan, told the FT, adding that the IPO “pipeline remains robust through September.”
Writing about Klarna’s lPO last week, PYMNTS noted it was “biggest FinTech listing of 2025 and a landmark moment” for the BNPL sector, just as recent PYMNTS Intelligence reports throughout the past year detail why the “pay later” consumer is becoming a central force transforming retail, credit and payments.
BNPL is now part of the mainstream, that report added, with 128 million American adults using a pay‑later product from at least one alternative credit provider in the past 12 months. The implication here is that pay later “is no longer niche; product, risk and marketing teams must plan for it as a primary tender,” PYMNTS wrote.
Also last week, PYMNTS spoke with Todd Stevens, chief capital officer for Figure, as his company’s stock began to surge.
The positive momentum from the start, he said, which raised about $787 million for the company, “tells us that investors are very interested in this possibly being a pivotal moment around companies adopting these types of technologies and really driving toward the future of capital markets … and how assets travel from buyer to seller.”
That future, Stevens added, includes Figure’s blockchain-centric philosophy on lending and asset settlement. “All we’re saying is our preferred method — and we think the market’s coming along with this — is to do this across a blockchain rail,” he said.