Amber Group's digital wealth management platform Amber Premium officially completed a merger with the US-listed company iClick Interactive last week, and the merged company was renamed "Amber International Holding Limited". It began trading on the Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol "AMBR" on the 13th, with a closing price of $11 and a total trading volume of $3.06 million, and a total market value of $960 million.
In addition to Amber Group, the Bitcoin rewards fintech company Fold Holdings (FLD) also completed its IPO on the Nasdaq earlier this year, and Circle also plans to complete its IPO this year.
There are also multiple crypto companies actively pursuing IPO plans. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Gemini has secretly filed for an IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on this issuance. Crypto exchange Kraken is also actively preparing for an IPO in the first quarter of 2026.
The crypto-friendly environment under the Trump administration is expected to drive 2025 to become the "IPO" year for crypto.
Amber Completes IPO After 8 Years and Over $600 Million in Funding
As early as October 2021, Amber Group's co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that the company was actively considering going public in the US within the next two years.
Although slightly later than the earliest expected IPO timeline, Amber Group has finally completed its merger and listing in the US.
The entity that participated in the merger and listing is Amber DWM, the holding entity of Amber Group's digital wealth management business Amber Premium. Amber Premium primarily provides asset management solutions for high-net-worth clients and institutions.
Prior to the merger, Amber DWM underwent asset restructuring, including acquiring 100% equity of its trading platform WhaleFin Markets Limited. According to the merger agreement, Amber DWM's shareholders will hold approximately 90% of the shares and 97% of the voting rights in the merged company.
Amber Group's co-founder Michael Wu will serve as the chairman of the board of the merged company Amber International, providing strategic direction. The other co-founder Wayne Huo has been appointed as the CEO and director, responsible for the company's daily operations.
As a veteran crypto asset management company, Amber Group's product matrix has expanded significantly since its establishment in 2017. Its core business is to provide customized digital wealth management services for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, helping users manage digital assets through quantitative trading and professional strategies, as well as market-making services and crypto derivatives trading.
According to the official website, Amber Group's cumulative trading volume has reached $1 trillion, with over 2,000 institutional clients.
In terms of asset management scale and revenue, Amber Group has disclosed little specific financial information in recent years. The latest public data is from 2022, when Amber claimed its assets under management exceeded $5 billion, and its revenue for the first half of 2022 was $250 million.
From 2020 to 2022 was a period of rapid expansion for Amber Group. In addition to a significant increase in assets under management, Amber Group completed at least 4 rounds of financing during this period, raising a total of nearly $630 million. The investors included traditional institutions like Temasek, Sequoia China, Tiger Global, and Tiger Brokers, as well as Web3 investors like Distributed Capital, Pantera Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.
When Amber Group completed its $200 million Series B round led by Temasek in 2022, its valuation had reached $3 billion.
However, following the FTX collapse and the subsequent market downturn, Amber Group also faced major adjustments.
Amber Group had approximately $60 million frozen on the FTX platform, although the company claimed this only accounted for 10% of its total trading capital and did not have a significant impact. Nevertheless, the market still had trust issues with asset management platforms like Amber Group, and certain specific products faced obvious "drawdowns" due to the FTX default.
Amber Group had to make strategic and organizational adjustments, reducing its headcount from a peak of around 1,100 to around 300, and temporarily suspending its metaverse projects and retail business.
Amber originally planned to raise an additional $100 million in a Series B+ round at a $3 billion valuation, but due to the market collapse and internal adjustments, it had to turn to a Series C round. Michael Wu admitted to Bloomberg that the Series C valuation was lower than $3 billion, but did not disclose the specific figure.
Possibly due to the crypto market turmoil and the entry into a period of stricter regulation, as well as the impact on Amber's own business, Amber Group's IPO plan was also delayed.
Now, with the Trump administration's deregulation of crypto, and the trend of integration between traditional finance and crypto finance, it presents a good IPO window for Amber.
Through the listing, Amber Group will have more capital, and can also align with compliance trends, attracting more institutional clients through higher standards of transparency and regulation, while also providing an exit channel for early investors.
According to Amber's press release, after the Nasdaq listing, Amber International will focus on four areas of expansion, with strengthening compliance being a key priority. Amber will launch tokenized RWAs and institutional-grade compliant investment products, and expand cooperation with asset management companies, private banks, and regulated financial entities.
Over 10 Crypto Companies Lining Up for IPOs, CeFi Leads the Crypto IPO Wave
After Trump's election, Wall Street institutions like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase began to pay attention to crypto market clients seeking IPO opportunities. ARK Invest also once stated that the Trump administration may reopen the IPO window for US crypto companies.
In fact, since Trump's election, multiple crypto companies have gone public in the US. SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) mergers have also been a preferred fast-track IPO method for crypto companies.
The Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck completed a merger and listing on December 11, 2024. So far this year, Amber and Fold Holdings have also completed US stock market listings.
Multiple leading crypto companies that have previously experienced IPO setbacks are also seizing the window to push forward their IPO plans.
By incomplete statistics, over 10 crypto companies have recently been advancing IPO plans, with the following progress:
- Kraken: According to a Bloomberg report last week, the crypto exchange Kraken is actively preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of 2026. Previously, Kraken's IPO plans were disrupted due to the Biden administration's strict regulation of the crypto industry.
- Gemini: According to Bloomberg and multiple sources on the X platform, Gemini has secretly filed for an IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to move forward, with the potential to go public as early as 2025. The company previously reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC and announced that the SEC has concluded its investigation, clearing some regulatory hurdles for the listing.
- Circle: In January last year, Circle restarted its IPO, still awaiting regulatory review. Circle's IPO has been very turbulent, with its 2021 plan to go public through a SPAC being canceled due to deteriorating market conditions. According to Polymarket's prediction market data, there is currently a 59% probability that Circle will complete its IPO by 2025.
- Bgin Blockchain: The crypto mining equipment manufacturer Bgin Blockchain has applied for an IPO in February, aiming to raise $50 million.
- BitGo: According to Aggr News, BitGo is considering an IPO as early as the second half of 2025.
- Bullish Global: According to CoinGape and Bloomberg, Bullish Global (the crypto exchange backed by Peter Thiel, the parent company of CoinDesk) is collaborating with Jefferies to explore an IPO, with plans to move forward within 2025. Its previous SPAC plan (in 2021) did not materialize.
- eToro: According to reports from Crypto Briefing and others, eToro has secretly filed for a U.S. IPO, targeting a valuation of over $5 billion, and plans to be listed in New York in the second quarter of 2025, with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and UBS as the lead managers.
- Ionic Digital: On October 21 last year, Ionic Digital announced the relaunch of its IPO plan. It had previously stated in November 2024 that it expected to become a publicly traded company in the first or second quarter of 2025, but the specific date is still undetermined.
- Blockchain.com: Last October, CoinDesk reported that the company is "interviewing investment banks" for its IPO, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, suggesting that it is still progressing with its listing preparations, but the timeline remains uncertain.
Additionally, Bankless has mentioned Digital Currency and ConsenSys as potential IPO competitors this year. The crypto asset management firm Bitwise has also stated that infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization company Figure, and analytics service Chainalysis are among the leading candidates for upcoming listings.
Looking at the crypto companies that have already listed or are planning IPOs, the top crypto exchanges and CeFi asset management firms are still dominating this latest wave of crypto IPOs.
