Last year’s investor dreams of a major IPO in 2024 have faded, if not completely, as we approach the mid-year mark.
In 2024, 4 venture-backed tech IPOs took place in March and April, Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik, indicating that this year could speed up the momentum investors were hoping for in 2023. However, secondary investors and IPO lawyers recently told TechCrunch that despite these 4 successes, macro conditions similar to the upcoming presidential election and elevated rates of interest mean that the IPO market is not going to fully open until 2025.
This year is still on track to be higher than 2023 and we’ll likely see several more public releases throughout the year. Companies like Klarna and Shein have partnered with bankers and appear close to achieving their goal, but their IPO timeline is still unclear.
In most cases, it is easier to decipher who will go public this year than who. Some late-stage startup CEOs have directly stated that they may not go public in 2024, while other firms have made financial moves that suggest going public is not imminent. Here are some venture-backed tech firms we do not expect to go public this year.
- Grille CEO Zach Perret said B2B fintech does does not plan an IPO in 2024 at the Axios event in March. This echoes what TechCrunch’s Mary Ann Azevedo reported last October when the company hired a latest CFO. According to the latest valuation, Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in 2021.
- When designing a unicorn Figma he didn’t say directly that he wouldn’t make an IPO this year, his actions are heading in this direction. In May, the company organized tender offer allowing existing investors and employees to sell their Figma shares, if they want, on the secondary market. This variety of liquidity event does not typically occur right before a larger liquidity event similar to an IPO. The tender offer valued the startup at $12.5 billion, which was lower than the $20 billion Adobe was willing to pay, but also higher than Figma’s last round valuation of $10 billion.
- Stripe also earlier this year it announced a recall for its current and former employees. In February, the fintech unicorn announced a secondary sale that valued the company at a whopping $65 billion. While this is lower than the company’s valuation of $95 billion in 2021, the company is still recovering its valuation. This means that Stripe will likely want to increase this valuation a bit more before it goes public.
- AI cloud platform Data cubes it probably won’t launch in 2024 either — perhaps to the consternation of VC investors who last year predicted it could be the first company to go public. Last fall, the company raised capital price $500 million in the Series I round, which valued the startup at $43 billion. While firms don’t typically raise funds right before going public – that’s a part of the IPO process, after all – the investors they raised from in this round were crossover investors like TR.Rowe Price. These aren’t investors who tend to balk at IPOs when market conditions improve, and they’re in good condition to be one of the first listings in 2025 if they select.
- Canva won’t likely go public until next year, and the design startup may have to wait until 2026. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht, husband of Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, said Running every dayAustralian and New Zealand technology publication, in March reported that an IPO would occur in at least 12 months, if not 2026. Fortunately for US investors, Obrecht also confirmed that when the startup wants to go public, it can occur in USA