Chime's initial public offering, filed this week, is likely to test the waters for other fintechs considering going public within the next year.

"We are excited to see Chime tap the public markets at a pivotal moment after weathering the capital markets deep freeze that has paralyzed fintech IPOs," Pitchbook senior analyst Rudy Yang said. "The timing is undoubtedly bold, but it is a strategic play that balances opportunity with calculated risk. A strong reception may help catalyze a long-awaited revival in fintech liquidity."

This would be a significant breakthrough given the drop in fintech venture capital exit value from IPOs from $222.4 billion in 2021 to $29.1 billion across the subsequent three years and through the first quarter of 2025, Yang said.…Read Full Article

Chad Gracia, CEO of Gracia Group and Registered Rep at Rainmaker Securities, breaks down ten common red flags new investors make in private securities - and how to avoid them…Read Full Article

A start-up is aiming to do to Lockheed Martin what Tesla did to Ford Motor. It might disrupt the entire defense business along the way.

Anduril, founded in 2017 and now valued at more than $30 billion, aims to become a prime defense contractor, building weapons systems using advanced, commercially available technology quickly and at scale, rather than bidding on cost-plus contracts for exquisitely designed, expensive, low-volume systems as traditional defense companies do. It seeks to put autonomy and software at the core of its products, as Tesla has done in upending the auto industry.

Anduril’s “job is to compress the [defense] market,” says Greg Martin, managing director at the private market exchange Rainmaker Securities. “Take the defense budget from $900 billion to $500 billion without losing lethality.”..Read Full Article

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Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, discusses the pause in big name IPOs and what that means for liquidity pressure. He joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Klarna's listing is the most-anticipated fintech IPO in years and is widely seen as a bellwether for the rest of the sector.

Why it matters: The pending IPO could encourage a growing push toward profitability for fintechs looking to go public.

The big picture: Many in the industry see Klarna as an ideal candidate to open the IPO window.

• "In any normal historical context, Klarna would already be public. It's a scale player [with] over $100 billion in GMV, over $2 billion in revenue, and profitable," says Rainmaker Securities managing director Greg Martin.

Follow the money: "If Klarna does well, we'll see Chime and Revolut right behind it," Martin says… Read Full Article

How do you solve a problem like Twitter? If you’re Elon Musk, you sell X to xAI.

He did OK on the sale.

In a Friday evening tweet on X, Elon Musk wrote that xAI had acquired X for $33 billion, or “$45 B less $12B debt.”…Read Full Article

Early investors in Anduril have been getting a lot of reachouts from people clamoring to snap up their shares.

Jackson Moses, founder and managing partner of defense-focused firm Silent Ventures, "started getting pinged left and right" about two years ago on the secondary market to sell his interest in Anduril, which he first invested in in 2021. His phone started ringing more over the past year and rang even more in the past few months.

"The last six months have been pretty crazy," he told BI. "Every reputable family office and institution wants to know, how can I buy this?"…Read Full Article

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Greg Martin considers Klarna a bellwether for the IPO market restarting. “A company like Klarna would historically already be public,” he says. He thinks it will perform well on its debut and expects it to price conservatively, but “the bar is high” among IPO investors.

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Swedish fintech company Klarna has filed paperwork to go public in the United States, on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker KLAR. Rainmaker Securities managing director Greg Martin joins Asking for a Trend to discuss the breaking news.

Klarna’s public listing got a bit closer on Friday as its prospectus filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission was made public…Read Full Article

As TikTok fights to keep its popular video app available in the US, investors in parent company ByteDance Ltd. are being forced to re-evaluate financial prospects for a business valued at more than $300 billion as recently as late last year.

Some of these American shareholders argue that, while a ban will take a near-term toll on their stakes, ByteDance's China business is the real driving force behind the lofty valuation and an eventual payday…Read Full Article

Elon Musk’s social-media platform has apparently made an incredible comeback. That’s a positive for Tesla  investors in one crucial way.

Musk’s X, which was called Twitter when he bought it in Oct. 2022, is close to raising money at a valuation of $44 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the deal.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The number represents a remarkable recovery. Musk bought the money-losing platform for about $44 billion. After slashing staff and losing advertisers, that valuation fell to less than $10 billion, based on estimates from Musk’s X co-investors…Read Full Article

• Secondary buyers had little interest in X last year, but that has shifted recently, according to Rainmaker Securities.

• Buyers have been willing to purchase shares at around the same price Elon Musk paid in 2022.

• Banks led by Morgan Stanley have been offloading billions in X debt at face value.

In the last month and a half, Glen Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, has started to see prospective buyers express increased interest in shares of X, formerly known as Twitter… Read Full Article

…"Klarna's partnership with JP Morgan Payments has the potential to move the needle for [Klarna's] business. It's no coincidence that the deal was announced while Klarna is on an IPO roadshow," said Glen Anderson, CEO and Co-Founder of Rainmaker Securities, in an email. 

Klarna's other distribution partnerships include Stripe, Adyen and Worldpay, among others, Klarna last year sold its checkout unit as part of a pivot to focus more on partnerships. The Swedish firm has also invested heavily in new forms of artificial intelligence to reduce overhead costs, another factor it can pitch to IPO investors...Read Full Article

Tesla stock couldn’t avoid a fourth day of losses on the Monday after the Super Bowl.

Consumer favorability ratings, steel tariffs, and even OpenAI might have unnerved investors.

Shares of the electric-vehicle maker dropped 3% closing at $350.73, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively.

The drop came as Stifel analyst Stephen Gengaro cut his price target to $474 from $492 in a Sunday report. He maintained his Buy rating…Read Full Article

…That amount marks a more-than-40% jump from 2024, when certain private market investors were only willing to acquire ByteDance shares at a price that would suggest a $217 billion valuation. The company got a tailwind from the seemingly improving TikTok situation in the U.S., after President Donald Trump said he would “probably” extend the April 5 deadline for the popular short video platform to be sold or banned, Glen Anderson, cofounder and CEO of U.S.-based broker-dealer Rainmaker Securities, says by email….Read Full Article

Tesla Inc.’s quarterly results this week drove home the lesson that profit and sales numbers don’t seem to matter much for this stock anymore. Instead, it’s Elon Musk’s narrative that’s wooing investors at the moment.

The electric-vehicle maker’s fourth-quarter earnings fell short of analysts’ expectations pretty much across the board. Profit, revenue and margins all missed. Even its sales growth outlook for 2025 was dialed back. Yet, the stock closed up 2.9% on Thursday, as investors shrugged off the disappointing report and instead focused on Musk’s upbeat tone on the robotaxi business, humanoid robots and artificial intelligence. 

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The so-called Magnificent Seven group of tech stocks have spent the past two years looking invincible, so it’s ironic that the companies worth $18 trillion in total market value were undercut this past week by a Chinese start-up no one on Wall Street had heard of just days earlier.

Such is the power—and vulnerability—of being on the cutting edge.

The new R1 artificial-intelligence model from China’s DeepSeek has comparable performance to some of the world’s best models, and seemingly comes at a lower price to train and run in the cloud…Read Full Article

The entrepreneur Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, in 2002 to reduce space transportation costs so humanity could eventually colonize Mars. While Musk's ultimate dream for the company has yet to become a reality, SpaceX has become one of the world's most valuable start-ups. As of early 2025, it was valued at $350 billion.

SpaceX has been a groundbreaking company over the years. It was the first private company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that reached orbit, the first to send astronauts to the International Space Station, and the first to achieve a vertical propulsive landing.

SpaceX has a growing commercial operation. It develops and manufactures spacecraft, provides launch services, and operates a commercial satellite-based internet service from its Starlink satellites...Read Ful Aticle

Greg Martin, managing director of Rainmaker securities, shares what to look out for in the IPO market in 2025.

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