The IPO Comeback
Tech Roundup: IPOs, VC Horror Stories, Y Combinator, Startup Fundraises, New VC Funds & more.
Hey readers!
Welcome back to your regular tech digest — a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past few weeks.
This edition breaks things down into:
🗝️ Key trends: The IPO Comeback
🔍 Top tech news
💰 Startup funding highlights
👀 New VC funds
🤝 Acquisitions
🎤 Must-watch interviews
and more… let’s dive in.
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🗝️ Key trends: The IPO Comeback
After three years of limited activity, the IPO market finally started moving again in 2025. The U.S. saw 347 IPOs, up from 225 the year before and the strongest showing since 2021. The difference this time was investor selectivity. Technology remained the most active sector, but capital largely flowed toward businesses with scale, proven business models, and a clear path to profitability.
Globally, 1,293 IPOs raised $171.8 billion in 2025, a 39% increase in proceeds despite a similar number of listings. More money was raised without a meaningful increase in deal volume, suggesting investors were willing to write larger checks but only for companies they viewed as higher quality.
Attention is now shifting to the next wave of potential listings. Companies such as Anthropic, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Canva remain among the most closely watched IPO candidates, while a broader group of late-stage private companies has spent the last several years strengthening operations and waiting for market conditions to improve. With continued interest in AI and defense technology, and signs of recovery in biotech, the pipeline for the remainder of 2026 appears strong.
🔍 Top tech news
OpenAI files confidentially for IPO, following Anthropic.
Italy’s Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO.
Users took to X this week to express their VC horror stories - see a collection of them here.
Vlad Yatsenko, CTO and co-founder at Revolut, has stepped down.
Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky is planning to start a new AI company.
Supabase, the open-source database of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $500M Series F, valuing the company at $10B.
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese joined German AI lab Black Forest Labs as an advisor.
AI music startup Suno raised $400M, at a $5.4B valuation led by Bond.
Nvidia-backed robotics startup Generalist AI raised $400M led by Radical Ventures, valuing the startup at $2B.
Lovable is in talks to raise funding at a $12B valuation.
Fuse Energy just hit $550M in ARR and raised another $30M.
Factorial raised $150M Series D at a $2.5B valuation.
Y Combinator’s Spring Demo Day takes place next week. See the latest batch here.
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💰 Startup funding highlights
Legal startup Wordsmith raised $69M Series B to scale legal AI platform for in-house teams.
Wix CEO backs Willow as the startup raised $7M for an AI agent control layer.
London’s Airspeed raised $20M Series A to build AI-powered execution layer for revenue teams.
UK AI startup Scope raised $17.9M led by Index Ventures to speed up industrial inspection workflows.
AI startup Viktor raised $75M to put a virtual ‘coworker’ in Slack and Teams.
AI video generation startup TrueFan raised $10M Series A funding.
Geordie AI raised $30M Series A led by Balderton Capital.
👀 New VC funds
Benchmark raised $2B for new VC funds.
Version One Ventures raised $108M as top Canadian seed investor expands globally.
🤝 Acquisitions
Salesforce acquired Contentful.
Autodesk acquired MaintainX.
🎤 This week on NEW ECONOMIES Podcast
Eddie Kim, Co-Founder and CTO at Gusto, joins NEW ECONOMIES on cracking the small business market, keeping all three co-founders for 15 years, and why he just built the most important product of his career in eight weeks.
Watch the episode in full now.
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