Crypto Firm BitGo Kicks off Huge Year for IPOs

What’s more appealing: loads of cash or the ability to avoid the public spotlight and the scrutiny that comes with it? In 2026, more companies are choosing the former, and a crypto company is the first to the party. 

BitGo made its public market debut last week, serving as both a kickoff for what Wall Street expects to be a monster year for IPOs and a market taste test for digital asset public listings following crypto’s recent nosedive. Bitcoin’s price hit an all-time high of around $126,000 in October, but was trading closer to $90,000 at the end of last week.

Priced above the expected range at $18, shares of crypto custody firm BitGo surged on its first day of trading before paring most of the gains, then sliding further on Friday to end the week at $14.50. Still, it warmed up the runway for other unicorns hoping to impress Wall Street. 

Listing Lift-Off 

“We are expecting the biggest year in the IPO market since 2021,” Matt Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital, told The Daily Upside. Amid a gradual recovery likely to last for years, he expects the “largest pipeline of pre-IPO companies since the dot-com era.”  

That doesn’t mean IPOs will reach 2021 levels, since companies nowadays are happy to sit on the sidelines and raise money privately. The median age of companies when they go public has risen from around 6.9 years a decade ago to 10.7 years today, according to a recent Morningstar analysis. And those private markets are very generous, as illustrated by the more than 1,400 global unicorns — privately held companies valued at more than $1 billion — that are collectively valued at $5.2 trillion. 

Kennedy expects a broader array of sectors, including biotech and industrials, to hit the public markets this year. Crypto still has legs but faces more pressure than a year ago, when it was riding the high of President Donald Trump’s election and hopes for deregulation, he adds. 

Some of the largest unicorns in the world are signaling that they’re ready for their public debuts: 

• Artificial intelligence companies Anthropic and OpenAI have taken early steps toward an IPO, The New York Times recently reported. 
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also reportedly prepping for an IPO, having met with bankers from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley in recent weeks, according to the Financial Times.  

Offering Opportunity: Valuations are nowhere near where they were during the rush of IPOs in the early 2020s, but that benefits investors, Kennedy says, since good companies can go public at reasonable prices. And retail investors, who have traditionally been excluded, are now gaining greater direct access to IPOs through online brokerages like Robinhood.