Greetings, Term Sheeters. This is finance reporter Luisa Beltran, subbing for Allie.

After Circle’s standout IPO performance last week, all eyes are turning to Chime Financial. The well-known neobank is scheduled to begin trading on Thursday and could benefit from a rush of IPO excitement. 

The company is selling 32 million shares at a price range of $24 to $26, with the final price for the offering to be set on Wednesday. Nearly 26 million of the shares being sold are coming from the company itself, while the rest will come from selling stockholders. Chime will trade Thursday on the Nasdaq under the ticker CHYM.

Founded in 2012, Chime offers traditional financial services, like fee-free checking and savings accounts, to lower income U.S. consumers who earn up to $100,000 a year. The Chime IPO appears to be oversubscribed and has seen investor demand exceeding the number of shares available by more than 10 times, according to Seeking Alpha, which cited a Bloomberg report.

After crawling for more than three years, the IPO market is finally experiencing a rebound, though it’s unclear whether that will last. Several companies, including eToro Group, Hinge Health and MNTN, posted strong debuts in May and each has since remained above its IPO price. The best performance by a newly public company so far this year belongs to AI infrastructure company CoreWeave, despite a less than ideal start. CoreWeave went public in late March, around the time when President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which caused many IPOs and deals to be put on hold. CoreWeave turned in a lackluster first day, with shares closing one penny above its $40 IPO price. Its stock rose in April and really began to gain steam in May. As of late Tuesday, CoreWeave’s shares were up 287% from its $40 IPO price.

Retail investors often get shut out of the IPO market, but CoreWeave shows that there are still opportunities to invest in undervalued companies, said Matt Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of pre-IPO research that manages two IPO-focused ETFs (NYSE: IPO, IPOS). (Shareholders who bought CoreWeave on March 31, when the stock closed at $37.08, have seen the shares soar more than 317% since then.) “Even in a hot area like AI there can be opportunities that fly under the radar,” he said.

Then there’s crypto firm Circle, which raised $1.05 billion with its IPO. Circle shares rocketed 168% during its June 5 debut. The stock gained during its next two trading sessions but lost ground on Tuesday, with shares falling 8%. Circle is currently up more than 241% from its $31 IPO price.

Circle delivered the “the best first day pop for a $1 billion IPO in our records. That’s quite an achievement,” Kennedy said.

Both CoreWeave and Circle have benefited from a wave of enthusiasm engulfing the IPO market, Kennedy said. He expects that excitement to extend to Chime. The fintech has shown tremendous growth over the last few years and is now turning the corner on profitability, said Kennedy. Chime narrowed its net loss to $25.3 million in 2024, compared to losses of $203.2 million in 2023, and reported net income of nearly $13 million in the first quarter.

FOMO, or fear of missing out, will also help Chime. The fintech has “brand recognition, growth and a lot more people are following the IPO market now than a month ago. Once traders start to see pops are possible that will get people interested,” Kennedy said.

Chime was valued at $25 billion in 2021, the height of the IPO market, but is now chasing an $11 billion valuation, a more than 50% drop. Kennedy thinks Chime could pop. “When excitement builds, you will see people pour into these companies,” he said.

See you tomorrow,

Luisa Beltran
X: @LuisaRBeltran
Email: [email protected]
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Troy Pospisil loved working for private equity firm H.I.G. Capital where, as an investment professional, he looked at hundreds of deals. But one thing Pospisil hated was the high volume of routine legal contracts, including non-disclosure agreements, that he and other executives had to review and negotiate. Pospisil estimates that he spent about 15% to 20% of his day on this “most painful aspect of workflow.” His solution was to quit PE and start a company to automate these time-sucking tasks.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had to give it a go,” said Pospisil, who made good on his plans and founded a firm called InCloudCounsel.

In 2014, Pospisil launched the company, which is today known as Ontra, with one product: Contract Automation, which streamlines routine legal agreements used in private capital markets and investments. Today, Ontra also offers products for contract negotiation, to simplify fundraising, and to modernize entity management as part of a suite that seeks to make the back office more efficient. 

On Tuesday, Ontra announced it has raised $70 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank, a unit of First Citizens Bank. In total, Ontra has collected $325 million in financing and equity from investors including Blackstone, Battery Ventures and Mike Paulus, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner who cofounded Assurance IQ. Because the financing was a credit instrument, there is no valuation available for Ostra, Pospisil said. 

Ontra ran a dual track process, considering both debt and equity providers, Pospisil told Fortune. Lenders that were interested in partnering with Ontra were offering attractive interest rates, prompting Ontra to pick SVB because it was a “far better deal,” he said.

“We are bringing in a great partner with SVB and we [didn’t] suffer any equity dilution for employees and existing investors,” he said.

Ontra currently has roughly 850 customers including the largest investment banks and private equity firms like Blackstone, Warburg Pincus, and Motive Partners, as well as asset manager AllianceBernstein.

Legal AI is growing fast

Ontra is one of several legal tech startups, including Ironclad and Juro, that use AI to automate routine legal processes for private markets and investment firms. Ontra currently employs about 385 people and has processed over 1.5 million documents.

Based in Concord, California, the startup plans to use much of the financing for R&D and to launch new products. In September, it plans to launch another three products to streamline due diligence questionnaires, to simplify processes for customer verification, and to further speed contract negotiation timelines.

Ontra is looking to scale rapidly with plans to launch two new products a year for the foreseeable future, Pospisil said. “We want to be the indispensable, ubiquitous infrastructure provider for the private markets,” he said.

But when it comes to a possible IPO, Pospisil appeared hesitant. The IPO market has been very slow since a record 397 companies listed their shares in 2021. But a recent surge of strong deals, capped by a blowout performance from crypto firm Circle on June 5, means the public equities market may be open to high-growth tech companies. “We may IPO if it’s the right thing for the business. We don’t view an IPO as a goal in itself,” Pospisil said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com