By Pritam Biswas and Niket Nishant
(Reuters) -Caris Life Sciences’ shares jumped nearly 29% in their Nasdaq debut on Wednesday, fetching the cancer diagnostic firm a valuation of $7.66 billion and signaling a growing investor appetite for new listings in 2025.
The shares opened at $27 apiece, compared with their offer price of $21, at which Caris Life sold 23.5 million shares to raise $494.1 million on Tuesday.
U.S. IPO market activity has shown signs of a sustained revival, with a few fresh listings such as Circle and Chime getting overwhelming support from investors in the past couple of weeks, after a slow start to the year.
Insurance tech firm Slide also had a strong Nasdaq debut on Wednesday.
“The IPO market needed to see some wins, and that’s exactly what happened,” said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs.
However, the revival has been mostly confined to sectors such as finance and technology, with the healthcare sector — typically one of the busiest in terms of IPO activity — lagging behind.
The finance and technology sectors have together contributed to nearly 70% of fresh flotations in 2025, compared to a mere 5% for the health care sector, as of June 17, 2025, according to Dealogic data.
“This one deal won’t fix the issue that has plagued the biotech sector, the primary source of U.S. healthcare IPOs,” Kennedy said.
Despite a strong debut, Caris’ valuation was a notch below the $7.83 billion the company had achieved in a 2021 funding round led by investment firm Sixth Street.
Caris, founded in 2008 by CEO David Halbert, uses artificial intelligence to study the genetic code from a patient’s DNA, RNA and proteins, and create personalized cancer treatment plans.
(Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Maju Samuel)
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