The boring IPO boom is back
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Boring companies are going public again, which may be an even stronger signal for the 2026 IPO market than is SpaceX.
Catch up quick: Three buzz-less companies priced successful IPOs last week, raising a combined $1.2 billion.
- Wealthfront may be the most notable, given that it's a 17-year-old tech unicorn that has nowhere near $500 million in annual revenue — a figure that some VCs have argued is the new IPO threshold.
- Shares barely budged on their first day of trading, but it still got out at the top of its range — adding cash to the balance sheet and starting the lockup clock for VC funds.
- The other two issuers were radiology firm Lumexa and Cardinal Infrastructure, which focuses on wet utility work. Solid businesses. Zero sex appeal.
Coming attractions: Hospital equipment company Medline is expected to raise more than $5 billion in an IPO this week, which would be the largest U.S. IPO in more than four years.
The big picture: The VC and PE pipelines are jammed full of these sorts of businesses, and this past week should be emboldening for both boards and bankers.
- Just because companies don't capture the public's imagination doesn't mean that they can't capture Wall Street's attention.
- If a bunch of boring companies come out, the 2026 issuance volume could be substantial — as opposed to just the dollar volume, which will be skewed by SpaceX.
The bottom line: The private markets are desperate for an IPO surge, even if some investors have exacerbated the drought via later and later stage financings.
- Fundraising has slumped, due in part to limited partners who won't write checks without seeing distributions. SpaceX should quiet a lot of that grumbling, but it can't solve the problem alone.
- So it's time to look into your portfolios. Find the company you don't talk about at parties. And take it public.
