Nicholas Gordon here. When is Airwallex, the Australian-born payments company, planning to go public? The company, which serves over 675,000 businesses and claims to have over $1 billion in annualized run rate revenue, once talked about having a U.S. IPO in 2026, but those plans have gotten fuzzier over time.
In a recent conversation for our new Asia Agenda series, president Lucy Liu told me that the firm still plans to be “IPO-ready” by the end of the year, but added that it’s “just not the best time, given how complicated things are.”
One can’t blame her for thinking that way. 2026 already boasts two key IPOs—SpaceX’s $85.7 billion debut and SK Hynix’s $26.5 billion ADR sale—and potentially a third in Anthropic’s. (OpenAI is reportedly considering a debut in 2027.)
And it’s not just the U.S. Shanghai has already had one blockbuster IPO, in ChangXin Memory Technologies’ $9.8 billion listing. And Alibaba just tapped Hong Kong’s equity markets for a $10 billion share sale.
A smaller company–even one as buzzy as Airwallex–might get lost in the shuffle as bigger investors hold on to their cash.
