Insurtech Ethos Technologies has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of stock.
The company intends to list shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “LIFE,” it said in the filing. The number of shares and target price have not yet been determined.
The company hasn’t nailed down how many shares hit the market or where the pricing sits. The sale launches “as soon as practicable” once the registration statement turns effective.
A spokesperson, bound by regulations, refused further comment.
The banks lining up show how seriously Wall Street takes this float. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan grab lead bookrunner roles.
Following them: BofA Securities, Barclays, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank as additional bookrunners. Citizens Capital Markets, William Blair, and Baird slide in as co-managers. A pretty crowded syndicate.
Ethos positions itself differently from old-line insurers. It acts as a licensed producer and third-party administrator.
That means it pushes applications and underwriting through electronic processes rather than paperwork and handshakes.
Ethos pulled in $200 mn during a Series D in May 2021, lifting its valuation to around $2 bn. Just two months later, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 put in another $100 mn, pushing total funding past $400 mn and nudging the company’s valuation to about $2.7 bn.
The earlier rounds stack up like this: a $60 mn Series C in 2019 led by GV and Goldman Sachs; a $35 mn Series B in 2018; and combined seed and Series A raises totaling roughly $11.5 mn.
Across these rounds, the consensus places total capital raised between $404 mn and $414 mn. Cooley, Forge Global, and Contrary Research show totals in that range, while Tracxn lists $408 mn. The last disclosed round was July 2021, a $100 mn Series D-1.
Since then, no additional major rounds have been reported. Ethos’s last widely cited valuation sat at ~$2.7 bn in 2021, although Prime Unicorn Index flagged a markdown to ~$2.30 bn after a 14.2% cut in internal share pricing.
Numbers in the filing tell a story—over 450,000 active policies, $320 mn in revenue for the trailing year, and $61 mn in net income. It’s not vaporware; it’s profitable, at least on paper.
Neptune Insurance Holdings wants in too. Its latest SEC filing shows plans to price shares between $18 and $20.
Stockholders would offload 18.4 mn Class A shares, and once the dust settles, 94.6 mn remain in circulation, each carrying a single vote.
Alongside, 43.43 mn Class B shares sit in the structure, with more control baked in. At the ceiling of that range, the raise lands at about $368 mn.
Trevor Burgess, chairman and CEO of Neptune, keeps the keys. He would hold roughly 82.1% of the voting power through Class B stock, locking Neptune as a controlled company the moment trading begins. Investors know what that means—concentrated authority, fewer guardrails, and less sway for ordinary holders.
We think both IPOs land in markets that remain jittery. Maybe they ride the tech-insurance narrative. Maybe they stall. But with LIFE heading to Nasdaq and Neptune’s deal pricing soon, the stage looks set.
