Gemini IPO squeezes into busy post Labor Day window
Gemini Space Station, a crypto exchange headed by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of Facebook fame, is the latest company seeking to tap into the public equity market's appetite for alternative financial services after filing documents for a Nasdaq IPO.
The August 15 IPO filing positions Gemini to begin marketing the offering immediately after the September 1 US Labor Day holiday.
Gemini is haemorrhaging money, and its revenue is in decline. Founded in 2014, the company bled through US$113.5m of adjusted Ebitda in the first six months of 2025 and revenue declined by 7.7% to US$68.6m – while marketing expenses and growing headcount factored into the losses, this is not the financial profile IPO investors are accustomed to.
“The financials show you a company that really wants to take the window of opportunity to raise a significant sum and for existing investors to sell down their stakes,” said Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster, that tracks IPO performance and investor sentiment.
Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Cantor are joint bookrunners on the all-primary offering, though the greenshoe is a mix of new and secondary shares.
Gemini is expected to raise US$500m on the base offering, multiple sources involved in the offering process told IFR.
The company’s historical financials have raised eyebrows, but there may be more to them than meets the eye.
Gemini has been confidentially marketing itself to investors ahead of the public filing. In those testing-the-waters meetings, management said they expect to grow revenue in 2027 to more than US$500m, triple the revenue generated in 2024, an investor who participated in the pre-marketing process said.
However, banks leading the offering are projecting 2027 revenue at a more modest US$400m, the investor said.
Gemini is seeking to differentiate itself by offering credit cards that give users a 4% reward on purchases payable in cryptocurrency. While fees from crypto trading fell 13.9% in the first six months of 2025, revenue from its credit card and crypto staking rose by 33.7%.
Gemini is going public in the tailwind of Bullish, which, while highly profitable, touted similarly explosive growth on its way to raising US$1.11bn on its NYSE IPO earlier this month. The Thomas Farley-led crypto exchange exploded 83.8% on debut and is now trading at US$66.68, some 80% above the US$37.00 above-range price at which it went public.
Investor demand for USDC stablecoin provider Circle Internet, whose shares skyrocketed 168.5% on debut in June and are now trading 320% above the IPO price, is another positive for Gemini, suggests IPOX's Schuster.
“The successes of previous deals, from Circle to Bullish, have incentivised investors to participate and will likely drive a relatively solid debut for Gemini and other crypto-related IPOs,” Schuster said.
Indeed, other crypto-related companies are queuing up to go public in the US. Grayscale, an asset manager that helped push through SEC approval of bitcoin ETFs in early 2023, and crypto custodial and transactional services provider BitGo have both confidentially filed IPO documents, allowing the SEC to review prior to publicly filing.
A more favourable regulatory environment under the Trump administration, highlighted by the passage of the US Genius Act in July, has raised expectations for a proliferation of crypto across financial services.
Coinbase, the industry giant, has put that growth on full display. The company, which listed in 2021 and is now valued at over US$100bn, saw its revenue double last year to US$6.6bn. Its adjusted Ebitda more than tripled last year to US$3.3bn and rose 32% in the first half of this year to US$1.4bn.