IPO News – US IPO Weekly Winners & Losers

Software may have eaten the world, but AI is eating software.

What does it mean for new listings? 2026 was supposed to be the year of the AI IPO, but so far it’s turning into the year of the AI-resistant IPO.

This past week we saw industrials, food, and furniture IPOs, all with positive trading. Meanwhile, software maker Liftoff Mobile postponed after close peer AppLovin took a nosedive. Four biotechs IPO’d – more than the past three quarters combined – a sure sign that the biotech rebound is underway.

All told, seven new listings made this one of the busiest weeks of the past four years.

Two thoughts on the volatility:

• The year’s early IPOs initially benefited from pent-up demand and greater retail participation. But now, the generalists are gone, and mixed trading has turned this into a stock picker’s market.

• A large chunk of the IPO Pipeline is software, an area where unicorns long shunned public markets. After this week, IPO investors are grateful to have been shunned. So now, after spending the past year adding “AI” to the IPO prospectus, startups will need to add a convincing case that their applications can’t be disrupted by a programmer using Claude or ChatGPT.

Markets had a roller-coaster week, but when the ride was done, the IPO Index declined -1.1% vs. -0.1% for the S&P 500. The best-performing new stocks featured AI infrastructure and food, led by chip maker Arm with a +17.4% gain. Blockchain-enabled lender Figure erased last month’s gains and fell -27.4%.

The stock market’s best days can often follow the worst, so selling on Thursday would have meant missing out on Friday’s big rally. I don’t pretend to know the future, but experience has taught me that stop-loss orders can help active traders hedge volatile new stocks, while passive investors are often better off holding than timing the market.

📅 Four deals are on the calendar for next week. Clear Street (Nasdaq: CLRS), a fast-growing provider of “plumbing” for capital markets, leads with a $1 billion IPO. As our analyst pointed out to Reuters, Clear Street’s business actually benefits from volatile markets. Brazilian fintech AGI (NYSE: AGBK) has a clear parallel in recent IPO PicPay, while SOLV Energy (Nasdaq: MWH) taps into AI power demand.

After next week, we expect a typical February lull as companies prepare their audited 2025 numbers.