That’s basically how Treasuries are auctioned. The problem for an individual company is I might be interested to IPO only under certain terms and be willing to pay a middleman to arrange that for the certainty. (The Treasury auction isn’t likely to move much and when it does, well, that’s the price-the government needs the cash to run; that’s not quite the same as a company who has other possibly viable options, including waiting.)

[0] - https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/res_au...