Stablecoin firm Circle scales record high after blockbuster NYSE listing
Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet's shares climbed 41% to hit a record high on Friday, extending a stellar run after a blowout market debut on the New York Stock Exchange a day earlier. The New York-based company's stock touched as much as $117.45, more than triple its offer price of $31 and valuing the company at $30.5 billion on a fully diluted basis.
The blockbuster listing also reinforced expectations that the IPO market was regaining its momentum after being stifled by tariff-driven volatility.
"This is big enough that it extends beyond crypto," said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs. Wall Street executives also struck an optimistic tone on Thursday at an industry conference, emphasizing that markets were ready for the right companies.
NYSE President Lynn Martin said Circle's IPO was a bellwether for the IPO market this year and not just for crypto listings.
Investors are also realizing that the uncertain environment is going to be relatively persistent and focusing on putting their dollars at work, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman said. "This is the latest sign of building momentum in the IPO market. We'll likely continue to see moderate activity over the next month, but there is still some tariff uncertainty on the horizon, which is why we're expecting more of a full IPO rebound in the fall," Kennedy said.
Digital banking startup Chime is poised to go public in New York next week. Sixth Street-backed cancer diagnostic firm Caris Life Sciences, private equity-backed debt buyer Jefferson Capital and Florida-based Slide Insurance have also joined the IPO pipeline in recent weeks.
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Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
For Sai Srinivas of Mobile Premier League, the game is always on
It's easy for people to put a value to a loss they've had," says Garimella Sai Srinivas Kiran, the co-founder of gaming company M-League, which runs the Mobile Premier League (MPL). '(But) It's hard to put a value to these intangible gains, right? You only notice them in the long term. In the short term, you only see the pain." Startup founders tend to be philosophical, a by-product of betting big on a non-existent product and making it work, despite the obstacles and the body blows. The seven-year-old skill-gaming platform MPL. which has free and paid components and a portfolio of over 60 games, probably does not qualify as a startup anymore, but tends to fall into the bracket by virtue of being a tech company. M-League, which now has five companies including the Berlin-based GameDuell, has a portfolio that includes skill gaming, free-to-play games, game publishing and AAA game studio (high-budget, high-profile games). With over 220 million users across MPL and GameDuell in 32 countries, a unicorn valuation as of the last fund raise in 2021, presence in Asia, Europe, North America and Africa, and 600-odd employees, the company straddles the challenging business of skill gaming. Its revenue in FY24 was $130 million. Sai was in Mumbai in early May for the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (Waves), a government-sponsored event. In the business centre of the Sofitel Hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex, close to the venue for Waves where MPL had a booth, the 37-year-old, dressed casually in a collared T-shirt, slacks and a cap, orders an Americano. He has an easy-going manner, and a dimpled boyish smile that he uses liberally. Sai is temporarily stationed in Singapore these days, where M-League is headquartered, while his co-founder Shubh Malhotra and Galactus Funware Technology Pvt Ltd, the operating entity for MPL, are based in Bengaluru. Since losing his father last year, Sai says he has started valuing his time more and separating his professional and personal identities. 'One of my core philosophies in life is anonymity. I want to focus on my business," he explains. 'I really enjoy travelling; I can travel literally 60 days with one suitcase, keep moving from one place to the other." Born in Hyderabad—his father was a deputy manager in a bank, mother a teacher in a government school—Sai's academic journey fell into two innings. He was 'not very good" in the beginning, but an inexplicable switch turned after class VI. By the time he reached the board exam stage, he wanted to study aerospace engineering. Also read: What Siddharth Roy Kapur wants: Fresh stories told in unique voices He got into IIT Kanpur which had, among other things, a dedicated leased line for fast (for those times) internet speed. However, he soon became disenchanted with the education system there and his enthusiasm for making aircraft withered away. 'For people coming from a normal background like us, the first important level of freedom we need to attain is mastery of our time," says Sai, who graduated in 2010 as one of the few in his batch without a campus placement. One of his highlights at IIT turned out to be organising the cultural festival, Antaragni, which included the music festival Synchronicity. What this first, quasi-entrepreneurial voluntary role did was to get him access to his first job, which was a brief stint as product manager with a digital company in Delhi. He was soon recruited by Zynga in Bengaluru as a game designer, though he had no such experience. 'I played a lot of games while growing up," he admits. 'My dad and I were always particular about getting new gadgets, like the Nokia 3310 and the (gaming console) Super Nintendo." Zynga, with its popular game Farmville, was going 'absolute gangbusters" at the time, which put Sai in the 'right place, right time". It also helped that he didn't like Delhi too much and moving to Bengaluru was not a challenge. The third benefit, unbeknownst to him at the time, was that the friend's place he temporarily stayed at had another roommate, Malhotra. A year-and-a-half later, Sai and Malhotra got ready with their first venture, CREO Tech. Their first product, Tewee, was a wireless HDMI dongle to stream videos over a Wi-Fi network, like the Amazon Firestick. The idea seemed to fit in at a time when streaming services were making their forays into the country. 'We were foolish enough to say let's make hardware," he says now. 'We used to download these documents in Chinese and spend days translating them and figuring out what they hacked our way to getting the product out." They sold over 50,000 units, but making hardware was challenging. Other similar products were getting into the market; the duo realised they needed to pivot. In the company of some 'smart engineers" they hired through their college network, their next venture was an Android-based operating system and smartphone, which also turned out to be an error in hindsight. 'I'll tell you the problem with making a phone and with hardware in general," he says. 'For example, let's assume I ship software and I left a bug in it. I'm just going to patch the software and I'll fix it. Life is okay, all good. With hardware, even if you make one mistake, the amount of time it's going to take to correct that mistake in the next iteration and then get it right—it's just massive." After several struggles, managing to make only a few thousand of the product Creo Mark 1, they sold the company to messenger service Hike in 2016-17. 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The following year, MPL signed on with the Board of Control for Cricket in India to be the kit sponsor for the Indian team. With the pandemic, the founders had to navigate working remotely, and between 2020-21, the company went from 120 employees to 1,200, perhaps hiring too many people too fast. 'In my 10 years of doing start-ups, I believe, that is the most unpardonable mistake," he admits. As MPL went global, especially into the US in July 2021, and acquired European company GameDuell in early 2022, 'one of the smartest things to have done", it also laid off 10% of its force and shut down its Indonesia office. But the business, on the back of the pandemic-induced lockdown that catalysed the online gaming industry, grew by 50%. Just when 2023 seemed on the up, hitting 200 million users and a foray into Africa, the government in August announced a 28% GST on funds online gaming companies collect from customers. 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Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Mithi River desilting fraud: ED searches 15 locations, including Dino Morea's home
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Business Standard
an hour ago
- Business Standard
US Supreme Court gives DOGE access to sensitive social security data
The decision allows DOGE, once led by Elon Musk, full access to personal data in the Social Security database while the case moves forward on appeal Bloomberg By Greg Stohr and Zoe Tillman The US Supreme Court gave the Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive Social Security information, lifting restrictions a judge said were needed to protect the privacy of millions of Americans. Over three dissents, the high court on Friday granted a Trump administration request to put US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander's order on hold. The decision lets DOGE, the office once led by Elon Musk, have full access to personally identifiable information in the Social Security Administration database while the case proceeds on appeal. 'Under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,' the court said in a three-paragraph order, which didn't lay out the majority's reasoning. The court's three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. In an opinion joined by Sotomayor, Jackson said the court was 'creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.' In a separate decision, the high court said a different judge went too far by requiring DOGE officials to testify and produce records to a watchdog group. The order came in a case about whether the DOGE office is covered by US public records laws. The Supreme Court liberals dissented from that decision as well. The cases are the first Supreme Court clashes involving DOGE, the office set up by President Donald Trump to weed out what he says is wasteful spending across the federal government. Sensitive Data Musk recently left his formal government position within the administration and is now publicly feuding with Trump. In the SSA case, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court that 'the government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs.' The disputed data includes Social Security numbers, addresses, birth and marriage certificates, tax and earnings records, employment history, and bank and credit card information. Hollander said two labor unions and an advocacy group for retired people were likely to succeed on their claims that unfettered access would violate the 1974 Privacy Act. 'For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,' the Baltimore-based judge wrote. 'This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.' Hollander's order allowed DOGE team members access to anonymized data only after completing the type of training and background checks required for SSA employees. She said DOGE employees could get 'discrete, particularized and non-anonymized' information if they submitted a written statement explaining why the information was needed and why anonymous data was insufficient. Hollander also ordered people affiliated with DOGE to delete data they've already acquired. The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals kept Hollander's order in place on a 9-6 vote. In her dissent, Jackson said the lower courts had crafted an order 'tailored to the needs of the moment.' She said the Supreme Court had 'truly lost its moorings' by granting the government's request without requiring it to show that it was suffering any harm. 'The 'urgency' underlying the government's stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes,' she wrote. Democracy Forward, the legal-advocacy group that represented the challengers, said it was a 'sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people.' White House spokesperson Liz Huston hailed the decision. 'The Supreme Court allowing the Trump administration to carry out commonsense efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and modernize government information systems is a huge victory for the rule of law,' she said in an email. The case is Social Security Administration v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, 24A1063. DOGE Records The Supreme Court's action in the records case blocks a Washington federal judge's order for the administration to answer questions, produce documents and make DOGE administrator Amy Gleason available to testify at a deposition. US District Judge Christopher Cooper had authorized the group that brought the public records case, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, to gather evidence about DOGE's activities as it fights with the Justice Department over the office's legal status. The Supreme Court majority faulted Cooper for requiring the government to disclose internal DOGE recommendations and to say whether those suggestions were followed. 'Separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal executive branch communications,' the Supreme Court said in its two-page order. Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson didn't explain their reasons for dissenting. CREW has argued that the DOGE Service should be considered an agency under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which empowers the public to see a wide range of government records. The Trump administration disagrees, arguing that DOGE plays a purely advisory role within the White House and is exempt from the law. Musk served as the public face of DOGE, but government lawyers stressed in court that Gleason is the formal head of the DOGE office. CREW's underlying public records request seeks to pry loose new information about the Tesla Inc. chief executive's role in dramatic cuts to federal spending and the workforce. The lawsuit also aims to reveal more broadly what DOGE-affiliated staff have been doing and the structure of that effort across US agencies. The case is US DOGE Service v. CREW, 24A1122.
