The Biggest IPOs in History -- and How They Performed

The market takeaway is not that mega-IPOs are automatically bad; it is that price discovery is weakest when a company arrives with a narrative premium far ahead of verifiable cash-flow durability. That tends to create a two-step trade: a strong first-print driven by scarcity and benchmark buying, then a multi-quarter reset once lockup expiration, post-deal supply, and reduced story momentum meet the reality of slower monetization. In other words, the risk is less about the day-one tape and more about the 3-12 month window when consensus ownership becomes crowded but fundamentals are still “show me.”

That framework favors businesses with clear monetization paths and recurring demand over the purest sentiment names. Among the tickers here, V and GM look like the cleaner expressions of post-IPO normalization: both have already survived the initial narrative-to-fundamental transition and are less vulnerable to valuation compression from growth disappointment. By contrast, RIVN and, to a lesser extent, BABA remain more exposed to the market’s tendency to punish any gap between implied scale and near-term operating execution; RIVN is especially vulnerable because EV demand is now more rate- and subsidy-sensitive than it was at the height of the 2021 enthusiasm.

A second-order angle is index and passive-flow mechanics. A mega-listing like this forces benchmark buyers and liquidity providers to absorb large float additions, which can temporarily depress neighboring names in the same factor bucket as capital rotates to fund the deal. That is most relevant for high-duration tech and unprofitable growth, while cash-generative platforms with similar investor bases can actually benefit once the market re-rates what is scarce: durable margins, not headline valuation size.

The contrarian view is that consensus is underestimating how quickly a successful debut can become a positioning trap. If the new issue clears well, underexposed funds may chase for weeks, but that can be faded once implied multiples migrate from “scarcity” to “comparable.” The better expression is not to short the IPO headline blindly, but to buy the businesses that can absorb new issuance gravity while selling the ones whose valuation is still anchored to peak sentiment.