Research — Feb 15, 2026

2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper

2025 US IPOs emerged out of a tumultuous April with strong price momentum going into the summer. The solid performance out of the gate from big name technology issues like CoreWeave and Circle set a very positive tone for new issue markets that peaked on June 23. However, investor enthusiasm for technology issues gradually switched to healthcare through the remainder of the year.

The below chart is a model portfolio that buys every single share of every U.S. IPO and on the day of the deal priced and simultaneously buys an equivalent market value of the S&P 500 on the IPO’s pricing date. If you had bought either all the shares or simply a pro rata share of every US IPO during 2025 the model portfolio would have returned 10.7% versus by the S&P equivalent at the time of each IPO of only 8.2%. The dashed purple line shows the equivalent daily performance of the US IPO market excluding technology companies and highlights the significantly positive impact that the sector had on the broader IPO market until late October, with that cohort only returning 5.5% during the year. In comparison, 2024 IPOs ended the year 38.6% higher (31.6% excluding technology) versus the S&P 500 model portfolio’s 10.7% price return.

2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper
The below chart shows the 2024 and 2025 full year performance of IPOs by size. US IPOs under $100 million in proceeds continued to perform poorly in 2025 after also struggling in 2024, with the less than $50 million issues declining 18.4% this year compared to a 17.1% decline last year. The data also highlights that $50-100 million US IPOs ended the year 11.7% lower on average this year, which is still a sharp improvement compared to -30.7% last year. The $100-250 million cohort was the best performer this year, returning 32.9% that was larger driven by the success of financial companies Miami International Holdings and Neptune Insurance Holdings, and healthcare company Heartflow that reported price returns of 93.0%, 45.8%, and 53.4% through year-end, respectively. The greater than $1 billion deal group increased 19.0% in 2025 versus 30.1% last year.
2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper

2025 Healthcare and Technology US IPO’s Outperform

The charts below show the 2025 and 2024 IPO price performance on top and the total change in market value on the bottom by sector as of the end of each year. Both the share prices increase of 41.7% and the $4.2 Billion increase in market value of IPOs from the healthcare sector were the highest among all the major sectors in 2025 compared to information technology’s 86.0% return and $3.0 billion market value increase being the highest in 2024. Technology IPOs also performed well in 2025, with a weighted average price increase of 36.0% and market value increasing $2.5 billion by year end. The energy sector was the worst performer during the year, declining 47.2% and a market value decline of $1.5 billion.

2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper

The charts below show the 2025 IPO price performance on top and total market value on the bottom by for the largest 15 subsectors by original issuance total as of year-end. IT services was the best performing subsector, reporting a 67.8% increases in IPO value during the year driven almost entirely by CoreWeave’s 79.0% share price increase. Healthcare had three subsectors in the top 15 by market value, with all reporting positive returns and healthcare equipment and supplies being the largest subsector at $10 billion and a 44.4% price increase which is mostly attributed to Medline’s IPO. Software was the second largest subsector at $6.5 billion largely across the Circle, Figma, SailPoint, Netskope, and Via Transportation IPOs and it closed out the year with a 26.8% increase. 

2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper

There was a total of $10.5 billion in wealth creation across the US IPOs that increased in price during the year, but 69% of all value creation was spread across only five companies compared to only 47% of the $6.0 billion in total losses being spread across the top five largest IPO declines in market value. The pie charts below on the left shows the top five largest gainers contribution to all 2025 increases in market value and the chart on the right shows the same for issues with losses. The top five gainers were concentrated in the healthcare, technology, and industrials sectors with Medline’s $2.8 billion increase in market value by year end accounting for 27% of all IPO price appreciation. However, each of the top five largest losses were from a different sector, with energy company Venture Global accounting for 21% of the total decline in market values.

2025 US IPO Performance Starts with a Roar and Ends with a Whimper

The strong performance of US technology IPOs during the first half of 2025 set the stage nicely for more issuers to go public during the second half of the year. However, IPO performance did begin to wane midsummer as concerns slowly grew over the massive amount of capital being raised by hyperscalers and their suppliers to pay for the surge in AI related capital expenditures. Technology and industrial issues performed well for a second consecutive year, with the healthcare sector registering 41.7% gains in 2025 versus a 1.3% loss in 2024. 2026 IPO issuance is off to an average start so far, with only $2.8 billion raised in January versus $3.6 billion during that month the prior year. However, several large IPOs across the AI, aerospace, and fintech subsectors could potentially create enough enthusiasm to act as a major tailwind to drive a surge in IPO activity this year.

Specials thanks to Tej Kasapu for compiling the data essential for this analysis.

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