Gemini Space Station, the crypto company started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, pulled off one of the most high-profile market debuts of the year Thursday night by setting its IPO price at $28 per share. Trading starts Friday on the Nasdaq (GEMI). After a week of shifting its price targets and trimming the offering size, Gemini closed out the process raising $425 million by selling about 15.2 million shares, according to multiple reports citing sources familiar with the offering.
Earlier this week, Gemini’s bankers hinted that the share price could land in a $17 to $19 window after initially aiming a bit higher. But investor demand outpaced expectations, with Reuters reporting that the IPO was more than 20 times oversubscribed, a striking figure, even for a buzzy crypto brand. The company then bumped up its price range to $24 to $26, and finally landed at $28, well above where it started.
Gemini had originally targeted selling as many as 16.67 million shares, but ultimately capped the value of the offering, meaning the final proceeds stopped at the $425 million milestone, not at the theoretical maximum if demand kept pushing up prices or volume. This “cap” is not something often seen in major U.S. IPOs, where companies usually maximize proceeds if there’s demand. Bankers working on the deal reportedly stopped taking orders once the cap was hit and scaled back the number of shares on offer.
Part of the story behind Gemini’s hot debut is the current turnaround in sentiment for digital assets. A few years ago, crypto companies struggled to attract public market investors after a string of regulatory and price collapses. But recent months brought record high crypto prices and, critically, some friendly regulatory signals, especially in the U.S., a welcome sign for sector innovation. This environment helped Gemini’s offering, but the heavy demand was also a testament to the staying power of the Winklevoss twins, who launched Gemini back in 2014 after famously battling Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook IP and becoming early crypto evangelists.
The final $3.3 billion valuation puts Gemini squarely in the top tier of public crypto exchanges. Its offering was led by heavyweight underwriters, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. According to company statements and regulatory filings, there is a 30-day window for underwriters to buy some additional stock if needed to cover oversubscriptions, standard in IPOs, but the bulk of the $425 million is already locked in by the main tranche.
Gemini operates a platform for trading more than 70 cryptocurrencies and has become a familiar name both to individual investors and deep-pocketed institutions over the past decade. With the IPO, Gemini’s founders have turned a startup that once had to fight for mainstream legitimacy into a public market success story, a shift that speaks as much to the revival of the crypto sector as to the persistence of the Winklevoss brothers themselves.
