ipo

According to CoinDesk, Kraken's parent company Payward is laying off about 150 employees. This move is part of the company's optimization adjustments in preparation for its IPO, according to two insiders. A Kraken spokesperson stated in a statement: "We continuously evaluate and adjust our organizational structure to ensure we have the right structure and talent to achieve growth objectives and better serve our customers."Meanwhile, Payward is seeking a new round of financing at a valuation of $20 billion to support its pre-IPO expansion strategy. Recently, the company completed a $600 million acquisition of stablecoin payment company Reap and a $550 million acquisition of digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial. The previous largest acquisition occurred in 2025, when Payward acquired the U.S. retail futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion, which also holds a CFTC futures broker license.Payward submitted a confidential S-1 registration statement draft to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 19, 2025, taking the initial steps toward going public. In March of this year, CoinDesk reported that the company had postponed its IPO plans due to a sluggish market environment, but insiders indicated that the company still plans to move forward with the IPO once market conditions improve. At the Consensus Miami conference, Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated that the exchange's IPO preparations are "80%" complete.

According to Renaissancecapital, Hong Kong Web3 service provider Web3Labs Global has submitted an IPO application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to issue approximately 6.3 million shares at a price of $4 to $5 per share, raising about $28 million.Based on the median of the issuance range, the company's valuation for this fundraising transaction is approximately $141 million. It is reported that Web3Labs Global plans to list on NASDAQ under the stock code "MDAT," with Eddid Securities and Futures serving as the underwriter for this IPO.

According to the official announcement, the Bitget IPO Prime Phase 2 project preOPAI has now completed allocation, and spot trading will begin today at 22:00 (UTC+8). For more details, please refer to the Bitget official platform.

According to the official page, since the Bitget IPO Prime Phase 2 project preOPAI opened for subscription on May 12 at 16:00 (UTC+8), the total number of participants has reached 5,098, with a total investment amount of 106,146,536 USD, currently oversubscribed by about 5 times. This round of subscription will close today at 16:00 (UTC+8), for more details please refer to the Bitget official platform.

According to CNBC, SpaceX plans to publicly release its IPO prospectus as early as next week, aiming to start a global roadshow on June 8 to formally introduce the deal to investors. The company secretly submitted its IPO application in April this year. This IPO is expected to become the largest in history. In February this year, SpaceX completed a merger with Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, resulting in a post-merger entity valuation of $1.25 trillion. Reports indicate that the company's target fundraising scale for the IPO is about $70 billion to $75 billion, more than double the record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. The expected valuation for the SpaceX IPO has risen from $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. According to regulations, the prospectus must be made public at least 15 calendar days before the roadshow begins, but SpaceX and its advisors hope to disclose it earlier to give investors more time to digest the financial data. Due to the unprecedented scale of this stock sale, SpaceX's advisory team is seeking special sales channels, particularly targeting retail investors outside the U.S. who prefer long-term holdings, including engaging with brokers in countries such as the UK, Japan, and Canada to secure allocation shares for their clients. As a result of this news, satellite and space concept stocks like Redwire, AST SpaceMobile, and Rocket Lab surged by 22.08%, 10.96%, and 6.77% respectively on the 14th.

According to The Information, the IPO process of AI chip company Cerebras Systems has once again attracted market attention, with key beneficiaries including Foundation, well-known venture capital firm Benchmark, and OpenAI.Cerebras has long been seen as a potential competitor to Nvidia, dedicated to developing ultra-large-scale AI chips, but its commercialization process has faced setbacks. The company withdrew its IPO prospectus in 2025, causing its listing plans to stall for a time. However, as the AI infrastructure boom continues to heat up, the market is refocusing on its potential listing value and early investor returns. Early investment firms, including Benchmark, as well as OpenAI, which has a partnership with the company, may gain substantial benefits from Cerebras' future listing.

According to CoinDesk, Ethereum application developer Consensys has postponed its potential IPO plans until at least the fall due to unfavorable market conditions. Consensys had planned to confidentially submit an S-1 registration statement to the SEC by the end of February this year and had hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to lead the process.In February 2026, the cryptocurrency market saw a significant decline due to macroeconomic uncertainties, tariff concerns, and outflows from Bitcoin ETFs, leading several crypto companies to suspend their IPO plans. BitGo was the only crypto-native company to go public in 2026, but its stock price fell about 36% from its IPO price. A Consensys spokesperson stated that they do not comment on market speculation. Consensys completed a $450 million Series D funding round in early 2022, with a valuation of $7 billion.

According to CoinDesk, hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has suspended its plans to go public in the U.S. due to unfavorable market conditions. Sources say that Ledger had discussions with investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays about an IPO in the U.S. this year, with a potential valuation of around $4 billion, but has not yet submitted an S-1 registration document to the SEC. The company is evaluating other options, including private financing.The report points out that after several crypto companies go public in 2025, many institutions, including Kraken, have postponed their IPOs due to weakening token prices, declining trading volumes, and stock market volatility. Additionally, the only crypto-native company that went public in 2026, BitGo, has seen its stock price drop about 36% below its offering price.

According to the official announcement, the Bitget IPO Prime Phase II project preOPAI is now open for subscription, with the investment period ending on May 15 at 16:00 (UTC+8). The token distribution phase will take place from May 15 at 16:00 to 20:00 (UTC+8); spot trading will begin on May 15 at 22:00 (UTC+8). Project details are as follows:• OpenAI implied valuation: $898.21 billion• Total subscription amount for IPO Prime: 29,082• Total subscription value: $21,084,450• Subscription price: 1 preOPAI = $725• Investment currencies: USDT or USDGO• Total investment pool cap: $300,000,000• Individual investment range: $100 - $600,000• Distribution schedule: 30% released on May 15, 30% released on June 15, 40% released on July 15

According to informed sources, Payward, the parent company of the cryptocurrency platform Kraken, is conducting a new round of capital financing at a valuation of $20 billion, to which Kraken declined to comment.The company has recently significantly increased its merger and acquisition spending—acquiring the stablecoin-focused payment company Reap for $600 million and the digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for $550 million, both transactions conducted at a $20 billion valuation.Its largest transaction was the $1.5 billion acquisition of the U.S. retail futures platform and CFTC-registered futures commission merchant NinjaTrader in 2025, which provided Kraken with a significant foothold in the U.S. derivatives market.Regarding IPO progress, Payward secretly submitted an S-1 registration statement draft to the U.S. SEC on November 19, 2025. Although reports in March 2026 indicated that the company paused its IPO plans due to unfavorable market conditions, sources stated that the company still intends to go public, but may wait for market improvements.At last week's Consensus conference in Miami, Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated that the trading platform is "80% ready" for an IPO.Additionally, Deutsche Börse (DB1) purchased approximately 1.5% of Payward's shares for $200 million through a secondary share sale in April 2026, valuing Payward at $13.3 billion (lower than the previous financing round's valuation of about $20 billion).In November 2025, Kraken completed an $800 million financing in two tranches to push traditional financial products onto the blockchain, with investors including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, and Tribe Capital. Subsequently, Citadel Securities also made a strategic investment of $200 million at a $20 billion valuation.

According to the official announcement, the asset for the second phase of Bitget IPO Prime is preOPAI, a digital token issued on the Solana chain by the regulated issuer Republic, aimed at mirroring the economic performance of OpenAI post-IPO on a 1:1 basis. As a leading consumer-level AI provider globally, OpenAI's official data shows that it has approximately 900 million weekly active users. Its most recent financing round reached $122 billion, with investors including Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, and SoftBank.Bitget IPO Prime adopts a subscription model, allowing users to obtain corresponding subscription quotas based on their account levels. After the token distribution is completed, users can trade in the upcoming spot market; they can also exchange for stock tokens or USDT based on the market price of the underlying company's stock, as entrusted by the issuer to Bitget, after the lock-up period of the preOPAI underlying debt asset ends.IPO Prime Details:• Implied valuation of OpenAI: $898.21 billion• Total subscription amount for IPO Prime: 29,082• Total subscription value: $21,084,450• Subscription price: 1 preOPAI = $725• Investment currencies: USDT or USDGO• Total upper limit of investment pool: $300,000,000• Individual investment range: $100 - $600,000• Investment period: May 12, 16:00 to May 15, 16:00 (UTC+8)• Distribution time: May 15, 16:00 to 20:00 (UTC+8)• Spot trading time: May 15, 22:00 (UTC+8)• Distribution schedule: 30% released on May 15, 30% released on June 15, 40% released on July 15

According to crypto analyst Murphy, Bitget's second phase of IPO Prime will be announced tonight at 18:00.On-chain data shows that preOPAI was minted on May 7 by Republic on the Solana chain, with the first batch of 29,082 tokens entering the project team's custody account. The top-level instruction is Mint_securities, and the calling program is 4X79YR...zMJwr3 (Republic's access token issuance program), with only the final step of distribution remaining before officially launching on Bitget IPO Prime.Based on the on-chain minting data and the previous preSPAX, which was a collaboration between Bitget and Republic, the second phase of IPO Prime is highly likely to be related to an OpenAI project.