Last year's investor dreams of a strong IPO pipeline by 2024 have faded, if not disappeared entirely, as we approach the halfway point of the year.
2024 spawned four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April, making it look like this year could fuel the momentum investors were hoping for in 2023. But secondary investors and lawyers of IPO recently told TechCrunch. That despite these four successes, macroeconomic conditions such as the upcoming presidential election and high interest rates mean that the IPO market will not fully reopen until 2025.
This year is still on track to be better than 2023, and we'll likely see a few more public filings throughout the year. Companies like Klarna and Shein have engaged with bankers and appear to be close to the line, but their IPO timelines are still murky.
For the most part, it may be easier to decipher who it's not will go public this year instead of who will. Some CEOs of late-stage startups have stated outright that they will not do an IPO in 2024, while other companies have taken financial steps that imply a public listing is not imminent. These are some of the venture capital-backed tech companies we don't expect to hit the public market this year.
- paintings CEO Zach Perret said B2B fintech had there are no plans to go public in 2024 at an Axios event in March. This echoes what TechCrunch's Mary Ann Azevedo reported last October after the company hired a new CFO. Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in 2021, its most recent valuation.
- While designing unicorn figure hasn't directly said it won't do an IPO this year, its actions point in that direction. In May, the company held a public offer allow existing investors and employees to sell their Figma shares, if they wish, on the secondary market. This type of liquidity event generally does not occur right before the largest liquidity event of an IPO. The public offering valued the startup at $12.5 billion, which is lower than the $20 billion Adobe was willing to pay, but also higher than the valuation of the last primary round Figma received, $10 billion.
- Stripe It also made a takeover offer for its current and former employees earlier this year. In February, the fintech unicorn announced a secondary sale that valued the company at a whopping $65 billion. While this is down from the $95 billion valuation the company earned in 2021, the company is regaining its valuation. This is a sign that Stripe will likely look to regain that valuation a bit more before hitting the public market.
- ai cloud platform Data bricks It's also unlikely to be on the agenda for 2024, perhaps to the dismay of venture capital investors who last year predicted it would be the first company to go public. The company raised a new $500 million in capital last fall in a Series I round that valued the startup at $43 billion. While companies typically don't raise funds right before a public listing (after all, that's part of the IPO process), the investors that did raise in this round were crossover investors like T.Rowe Price. Those are not the type of investors who tend to oppose IPOs when market conditions improve and they are in good shape to be among the first listings in 2025, if they so choose.
- canva It's not likely to go public until at least next year and the design startup will most likely wait until 2026, said co-founder Cliff Obrecht, husband of Canva CEO Melanie Perkins. tech-and-thats-why-theyre-listing-in-the-us/”>Daily Homean Australian and New Zealand tech publication, in March that an initial public offering would be at least 12 months away, if not sometime in 2026. Luckily for American investors, however, Obrecht also confirmed that when the startup looks to exit to the stock market, it will. then in the United States
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