Gulf, London, SE Asia Fight for Tech IPOs

The big three IPO markets get the headlines, but a quieter contest is reshaping where technology companies choose to list. Gulf capital, a wounded London and an ambitious Singapore are all making their pitch.

The largest technology IPO of 2025 was not American, Chinese or Indian in origin. It was Klarna, the Swedish buy-now-pay-later group, which priced its shares at $40 and raised close to $1.4 billion on the New York Stock Exchange on September 10, with the stock jumping about 15% on debut to value the company near $17.5 billion. That a European fintech chose New York, not its home market, tells you most of what you need to know about the contest now playing out for tech listings beyond the big three markets. London, the Gulf exchanges and Singapore are all competing for founders, and the balance of power is shifting toward whoever controls the capital.

London is fighting from behind

The London Stock Exchange has slid from one of the world’s top venues to an afterthought for growth companies. By Bloomberg’s accounting in October 2025, the UK had fallen out of the top 20 destinations for IPOs by fundraising volume, trailing markets such as Mexico and Oman after years of de-listings and high-profile snubs. The structural problem is that London’s investor base has tilted toward cash-generative defensives, while fintech and AI names now benchmark themselves against Nasdaq peers.

Reform is the response. The UK has rewritten its listing rules so that companies of sufficient scale can enter the FTSE 100 within five days, and the government has floated changes to stamp duty and ISA limits to draw retail money back. Whether that is enough remains an open question. Revolut, Britain’s most valuable fintech at a $75 billion valuation after a November 2025 secondary share sale, has reportedly told investors it is targeting $150 billion to $200 billion in an eventual IPO and has long favored a US listing for its deeper liquidity. The same dynamic that pushed American tech companies back into public markets in 2026 is pulling European founders across the Atlantic.

The Gulf is buying its way to relevance

If London is defending, the Gulf is on offense, and its weapon is capital. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has grown from roughly $150 billion in assets in 2015 to more than $930 billion in 2025, while Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala manages around $300 billion and deployed $12.9 billion into AI and digitalization in 2025 alone, according to a sovereign wealth tracker cited by Yahoo Finance. That money increasingly comes with an expectation that portfolio companies will list at home.

The clearest test case is Tabby, the BNPL group that is now the most valuable fintech in the Middle East at a $4.5 billion valuation. Tabby has hired HSBC, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley and is preparing an IPO on the Saudi exchange Tadawul, though the size and timing are not finalized and current reports point to a 2026 window. A homegrown fintech choosing Riyadh over New York would be a notable reversal of the Klarna pattern, and it is partly a policy creation: Saudi Arabia scrapped its Qualified Foreign Investor designation in February 2026, opening the main market to all non-resident foreign buyers.

Tadawul’s mixed record is the catch

The Gulf pitch is not without strain. Tadawul’s main market is set to raise a combined $3.9 billion across 2025, close to the prior year’s $4.1 billion record, but the quality of those debuts was uneven. Of 13 main-market IPOs to price in 2025, only five traded up on their first day, and the benchmark index fell roughly 13% on the year, prompting the regulator to push fresh measures to attract foreign money.

The PIF itself has been slow to bring its own technology assets public. Despite a long list of announced plans, only two PIF companies have listed so far, Saudi Tadawul Group in 2021 and the technology firm Elm in 2022. More recently the fund appointed advisers for an IPO of its cybersecurity unit Saudi Information Technology Co. The Gulf has the capital to anchor deals, but it is still building the track record that convinces founders the after-market will hold.

Southeast Asia bets on a bridge to Nasdaq

Singapore has the opposite problem: a stable, well-regulated exchange that big tech keeps bypassing. Sea, Grab and Razer all chose New York or Hong Kong, and the SGX has struggled to keep regional unicorns at home. Its 2025 IPO haul of about $1.6 billion over the first ten and a half months leaned heavily on REITs rather than new-economy names, and average daily turnover sits near $1.4 billion against roughly $29 billion in Hong Kong.

Singapore’s answer, announced in January 2026, is to stop fighting the US and partner with it. The SGX is building a Global Listing Board offering a dual-listing pathway with Nasdaq, set to launch later in 2026, for companies valued above S$2 billion (about $1.6 billion). The promise, in an SGX spokesperson’s words, is “U.S. market depth and Asian growth in a streamlined pathway.” Analysts have cautioned it is no silver bullet unless American investors actually trade during Singapore hours. The threshold also excludes smaller firms, where Hong Kong’s secondary-listing bar of roughly $385 million is far more accommodating, which is one reason Hong Kong has reemerged as the default venue for Greater China and Asian tech.

Shein shows how political the venue choice has become

No single saga captures the new map better than Shein. The fast-fashion giant filed a draft prospectus with the Hong Kong exchange in July 2025 after its London plan stalled, having won approval from the UK’s FCA but never securing clearance from China’s CSRC. Reporting attributed the impasse partly to disagreements over how to disclose supply-chain risks tied to the Xinjiang region. A Hong Kong listing has reportedly been discussed in the $30 billion to $50 billion range, per coverage cited in early 2026, a steep markdown from the $66 billion a 2023 funding round implied. Those figures remain unconfirmed and no date is set.

For founders weighing where to go public, the lesson is that venue is now a strategic and political decision, not just a financial one. The deepest pools of capital still sit in New York, which is why companies from Anthropic to other AI heavyweights are circling US filings. But sovereign wealth, regulatory reform and clever exchange partnerships are giving founders real alternatives for the first time in years. The competition among mid-tier financial centers is, on balance, good news for the companies they are courting.

FAQ

Why did Klarna list in New York instead of Europe?

Klarna sought the deeper liquidity and higher valuations available on US exchanges, where fintech and growth stocks trade at richer multiples. Its September 2025 NYSE debut raised close to $1.4 billion and valued the company near $17.5 billion, making it the largest tech IPO of the year, per CNBC and Yahoo Finance.

Will Tabby actually list in Saudi Arabia?

Tabby has hired major banks and is reportedly preparing a Tadawul IPO in a 2026 window, but the size and timing are not finalized. Saudi Arabia’s removal of its Qualified Foreign Investor rules in February 2026 was designed to widen the investor base for exactly this kind of listing.

What is the SGX-Nasdaq bridge?

It is a Global Listing Board the Singapore Exchange plans to launch later in 2026, letting companies valued above about $1.6 billion list across both venues to combine US market depth with Asian growth, according to Fortune.

The New IPO Map: How the Gulf, London and Southeast Asia Are Fighting for Tech Listings