IPOs get stuck in government shutdown limbo as SEC goes quiet

Wall Street had its popcorn ready: After three years of sputters, the IPO screen was lighting up again , with Klarna , CoreWeave , and a handful of buzzy consumer names. Then Washington tripped over the power cord, plunging the whole IPO theater into darkness .

With a federal government shutdown having started this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission is running on a skeleton crew. That means no new registration statements get reviewed, no comment letters get cleared, and no “effective” notices get stamped. The EDGAR paperwork portal is technically open, but without staff to process deals, it’s like hitting “submit” into a black hole.

That leaves high-profile would-be stock issuers — electric-aircraft maker Beta Technologies, Jennifer Garner’s baby-food brand Once Upon a Farm, and insurer Ethos Technologies — stuck at the gate. Alliance Laundry Systems and the University of Phoenix, both already on roadshows, are hoping that their timing bet (that the shutdown would be short) pays off. But if history is any guide, the logjam fattens by the day.

Initial public offering calendars run on an unforgiving clock: Financial statements go stale if the balance sheet is more than 135 days old, meaning companies that miss their October or November windows have to update to third-quarter numbers. That means revised filings, fresh audit reviews, new comfort letters — all costly, all delaying the sprint until January at the earliest.

Vineet Jain, the CEO of cloud-based software company Egnyte, said that if the shutdown is “short-lived,” he doesn’t see much of an impact on IPOs. “But if it goes longer, like what happened in 2018... then there could be a potential impact.”

During the last government shutdown — the 35-day freeze from December 2018 to January 2019 during President Donald Trump's first term — the domestic IPO almost ground to a halt. With the SEC unable to review or clear prospectuses, there were no traditional IPOs priced for weeks. A few companies tried workarounds: blank-check SPACs managed to slip through, and New Fortress Energy pushed forward by stripping out its “delaying amendment” so its registration could automatically become effective.

But those were exceptions, and January 2019 went down as one of the weakest months for IPO activity in years.

Once the government reopened, the backlog unleashed a flurry of activity, and 2019 ultimately produced hefty IPO proceeds thanks to blockbuster debuts, even though the number of listings fell. The lesson for 2025 seems clear: Shutdowns don’t kill IPO markets, but they do freeze them in place, delaying liquidity for companies and bankers and creating a crowded calendar when the gates finally reopen. The longer the pause, the more likely momentum slips and outside factors — from tariffs to inflation — creep in to reshape how investors value those deals when they finally hit the tape.