Chris Ruddy — a former New York Post journalist and the founder of conservative cable news network Newsmax — became an improbable billionaire in late March when Newsmax’s shares soared more than 2,200% in its first two days of trading, valuing his stake at more than $9.1 billion on paper. That was short-lived: a day later, Newsmax’s shares fell by nearly 80%, and Ruddy’s net worth is currently hovering at about $339 million, according to Bloomberg’s calculations. In early October, Newsmax’s stock gained 11% after it announced plans to spend as much as $5 million to add reserves of Bitcoin and Trump Coin to its balance sheet, but its stock price has continued its fall since then.
“While Newsmax did experience a brief large increase in share price immediately following its public listing, that movement was driven by a very limited public float and strong initial investor demand,” according to a spokesperson for Newsmax. “Since then, the shares have traded closer around the IPO price. We would caution against using brief post-listing price movements, driven by limited float and technical listing dynamics, as a proxy for personal wealth. Mr. Ruddy was subject to customary lock-up restrictions and therefore could not monetize shares at that time or at those levels.”
Figma: Dylan Field and Evan Wallace
Current stake value: Field, $2 billion; Wallace, $1 billion
In 2023, Adobe Inc. walked away from a $20 billion acquisition of design software firm Figma Inc. after facing regulatory pushback. Figma trounced that valuation when it made its public debut in July, with shares jumping 250% in the largest first-day pop in at least 30 years for a US-traded company raising more than $1 billion. The IPO put co-founder Dylan Field in pole position to unlock multiple tranches of a massive “moonshot”-style pay package approved just a month before the offering, which were slated to vest in line with a series of ascending share price targets.
However, shares swiftly gave back most of those initial gains and declined further when Figma’s revenue outlook failed to impress investors in September, sending shares down 20% the day after earnings were released. Although vesting of performance-based equity awards has softened the pain for Field somewhat, the value of both his and co-founder Evan Wallace’s stakes in Figma at the time of the IPO have fallen dramatically since.
Bullish: Brendan Blumer and Kokuei Yuan
Current stake value: Blumer, $1.8 billion; Yuan, $1.6 billion
Digital-asset exchange operator Bullish initially planned to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company in 2021, but scrapped the tie-up a year later as crypto markets cooled. When the company raised $1.1 billion during its August IPO, there was plenty more demand than the first time around: The offering was more than 20 times oversubscribed, and shares nearly doubled during the first day of trading, making co-founders Brendan Blumer and Kokuei Yuan both billionaires.
In the months since, though, Bullish — which also owns cryptocurrency publication CoinDesk — has floundered, with shares falling some 45% from their peak. The firm received approval to operate in New York state in September, paving the way for its launch in the US market, but that relief was short-lived, and shares sank below the IPO offering price two months later.
Like Bullish, stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group Inc. had planned to go public via a SPAC deal during the crypto market’s peak in 2021 but ultimately scrapped the $9 billion merger a year later. The decision paid off: when Circle — the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market cap — began trading in June, its shares more than doubled in its first full trading day. Shares continued to spike over the following week, and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire’s stake was worth as much as $5 billion in late June. That initial euphoria died down quickly, but the signing of the GENIUS Act in July, which helped solidify a regulatory framework for stablecoins, has kept Circle’s shares trading well above the offering price.
Fermi: Toby Neugebauer and Griffin Perry
Current stake value: Neugebauer, $2.1 billion; Perry, $566 million
Despite only being founded in January, real estate investment trust Fermi Inc.’s shares soared 55% in its October IPO as investors looked for new ways to pile into the artificial intelligence trade. Led by Toby Neugebauer and Griffin Perry, son of former Texas governor Rick Perry, Fermi is hoping to draw hyperscaler tenants to its “Project Matador,” a development-stage advanced energy and data center campus.
However, shares plunged after it reported a $353 million net loss in its first quarterly earnings report and Amazon.com Inc. reportedly backed out of a $150 million deal to fund some of its construction costs.
Klarna: Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Victor Jacobsson
Current stake value: Siemiatkowski, $816 million; Jacobsson, $780 million
When the fintech behemoth Klarna Group Plc made its long-awaited public debut in the US in September, shares rose 15% in its first day of trading, giving the company a market value of more than $17 billion. That was a steep dropoff from 2021, when it was valued at nearly $46 billion in a funding round, but still big enough to make billionaires of co-founders Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Victor Jacobsson. But Klarna’s shares have weakened since its debut as it added to provisions, sparking concerns about how US consumers are faring amid persistent inflation.
Gemini: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss
Current stake values: Cameron Winklevoss, $419 million; Tyler Winklevoss, $419 million
Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins made famous for their portrayals in the hit movie were already billionaires before Gemini Space Station Inc., their digital asset exchange, went public in September. They’d been major holders of Bitcoin for over a decade after plowing millions of dollars they’d earned after a protracted battle with Mark Zuckerberg over their role in the creation of Facebook into the digital asset. Despite reporting more than $283 million in net losses in the first half of 2025, Gemini rode a wave of enthusiasm for crypto-focused IPOs, raising $425 million in a double-digits-oversubscribed September offering, and the listing brought each brother’s stake in Gemini to more than $1 billion.
In his first act as a founder, Mike Cagney started SoFi Technologies Inc., an online lender that initially focused on student loans and later expanded into consumer banking. After resigning from SoFi in 2017, he started Figure Technology Solutions Inc., which uses blockchain technology to facilitate lending. The company saw its shares soar nearly 24% on its first day of trading when it offered stock in mid-September, helping to propel Cagney into the billionaire ranks.
The public debut of Neptune Insurance Holdings Inc., a St. Petersburg, Florida.-based insurance firm, came near the tail end of this year’s relatively mild hurricane season, when no storms made landfall in the US. Neptune focuses specifically on flood risks, and doesn’t itself hold policies on its balance sheet, instead selling AI-driven technology to help other insurers and reinsurers price their risk. Neptune raised nearly $370 million in an IPO this fall and saw shares leap 24% from the offering price, valuing the company at about $3.4 billion. That was a huge turnaround from 2016, when CEO Trevor Burgess bought a majority stake in the firm for just $2 million in equity and debt. After giving up early gains, Neptune is once again trading near its peak.
Change since the opening price on the day the SPAC deal closed on April 11: -49%
Change since high-water mark on April 14: -87%
Retail brokerage Webull Corp. had a meme-stock moment of its own following the closure of a SPAC deal that saw it go public in April, with shares rising nearly 375% in its first day of trading. That gave founder Anquan Wang a $5.2 billion fortune on paper, while his co-founder Jun Yuan’s stake was worth an additional $1.9 billion. The strong debut came despite the fact that the trading app reported a $34 million loss in the nine months to September 2024, even as competitors including Robinhood Markets Inc. posted strong profits over the same period. Webull’s share price collapsed nearly as fast as it rose: Shares sank back to around the offering price within three weeks, and have only declined since.
CoreWeave: Mike Intrator, Brannin McBee and Brian Venturo
Current stake value: Intrator, $4.7 billion; McBee, $2.2 billion; Venturo, $2.7 billion
Mike Intrator, Brannin McBee and Brian Venturo — the three former commodities traders who started CoreWeave Inc. in 2017 — all saw their stakes in the cloud-computing provider climb over $1 billion when its shares began trading in March, despite the fact that the offering was heavily downsized. Since then, CoreWeave has become one of the hottest trades in the AI space, notching record highs in June weeks after Nvidia Corp. increased its stake. Shares have fallen from those highs as the AI trade has lost steam, but are still trading comfortably above the offering price.
