Coinbase Lets Retail Investors Buy Into Oura's IPO Before It Hits the Public Market

Coinbase announced on Sept. 21 that eligible U.S. retail customers can now request shares in initial public offerings through its app before those stocks start trading, kicking off the feature with smart-ring maker Oura's $2.2 billion offering, according to Coinbase's own blog post and reporting from Crypto.news.

This breaks from how IPOs normally work. For decades, getting shares at the offer price before a stock opens on the exchange was reserved for institutional investors and Wall Street's favored clients. Everyone else waited for the stock to hit the open market, often after the price had already run up.

How It Actually Works

Customers have to complete a FINRA questionnaire first, then open the IPOs section of the Coinbase app, pick an active deal, and fund their account, according to Bitcoin.com News. Once the expected price range goes public, users submit a "Conditional Offer to Buy," which they can edit or cancel while the order book is open.

Coinbase Capital Markets, the company's FINRA-registered broker-dealer, acts strictly as an agent here. It routes orders through clearing partner Apex Clearing Corporation rather than underwriting the deal itself, TradingView reported, citing The Block.

There's a catch built in for anyone hoping to flip shares fast. Coinbase says its allocation algorithm favors customers who look likely to hold, not sell. Dump your allocated shares within the first 30 days and you can get locked out of future IPO offerings for 60 days. Do it repeatedly and you get smaller, less frequent allocations going forward, according to Crypto.news. Coinbase framed it directly: "Our allocation algorithm prioritizes investors who believe in what they're purchasing for the long haul."

Securities accounts and crypto accounts stay separate on the platform, and Securities Investor Protection Corporation coverage does not extend to digital assets or cash held in Coinbase's crypto business, per Crypto.news.

The Oura Deal

Oura and its existing shareholders are offering 50 million shares priced between $40 and $44, which at the top end would raise $2.2 billion and value the company at roughly $15.62 billion fully diluted, according to Reuters figures cited by Crypto.news. The company filed its S-1 with the SEC on Sept. 3, listing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Allen & Co., and Jefferies as lead bookrunners, per Bitcoin.com News.

Oura's business is growing fast. Revenue hit $1.21 billion for the nine months ending June 30, up 74% from the same period a year earlier, Reuters reported. Eli Lilly has expressed interest in buying up to $100 million of shares, and investment firm Dragoneer may buy up to $300 million, according to the same Reuters figures.

But TechCrunch's coverage points to a less flattering angle that other outlets in this roundup skipped. Forerunner Ventures, one of Oura's earliest backers, plans to sell its entire stake for as much as $1.26 billion in this offering, according to TechCrunch's read of Oura's IPO filing. A big chunk of this deal is existing shareholders cashing out, not new capital going into the company. Retail investors requesting shares through Coinbase this week are buying in at the same moment insiders are heading for the exit.

Coinbase's Own Stock Jumped

Coinbase shares climbed more than 5% on Sept. 21 to around $203.44, pushing the company's market capitalization to roughly $54.1 billion, according to Ground News aggregation of the day's trading. TradingView noted the move broke COIN above a year-long descending trendline from its January high near $260 and cleared its 200-day exponential moving average for the first time since the downtrend began.

Brett Tejpaul, Coinbase Institutional's co-CEO, tied the launch to a bigger ambition: "We are building toward a complete global financial platform, and expanding our IPO offerings brings us one step closer," he said, according to TradingView.

The IPO feature is one piece of what Coinbase calls its "Everything Exchange" — a platform already offering crypto, more than 8,000 stocks and ETFs, and pre-IPO perpetual futures that gave non-U.S. users synthetic exposure to SpaceX starting in June. Coinbase has also filed with the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission seeking approval for single-stock perpetual contracts tied to companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to Ground News. Those derivative products remain pending regulatory approval and offer price exposure without actual share ownership, a distinction Coinbase itself draws from the Oura-style IPO allocations.

What's Unresolved

Giving ordinary investors the same shot at IPO pricing that institutions have long enjoyed is a win for market access. Retail investors have complained for years about being shut out of hot offerings until after the pop. Coinbase's move addresses that directly.

IPOs frequently price rich, run up on hype, and then fade once the lockup on insider shares expires. Forerunner's near-total exit from Oura is exactly the kind of signal that has historically preceded rocky first years for newly public companies, though Oura's revenue growth gives buyers a case for optimism the underwriters clearly share.

Oura is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker OURA later this week. Whether it prices at the top of its $40-to-$44 range, and whether Coinbase's retail allocation holders end up net winners or the exit liquidity for early venture backers, won't be clear until the stock actually opens.