Postmates Raises $225M More At $2.4B Valuation Despite Private IPO Filing

Postmates, an on-demand delivery unicorn raised $225 million in new capital at a $2.4 billion valuation, it announced today. The company previously filed privately to go public, making its new investment more interesting than a traditional, nine-figure late-stage round.

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The new capital comes after it was rumored that Postmates was targeting September as the month to release its IPO filing to the public, kicking off the final steps to becoming a public company. Crunchbase News was very interested in seeing its sums.

As a private company, Postmates has proven to be a prodigious fundraiser. Raising just over $681 million before its new round, Postmates has attracted capital from BlackRock, Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Harmony Partners, Spark Capital, among other investors. GPI Capital, a private equity firm, led its latest round.

Postmates’ valuation rose from $1.9 billion in early 2019, according to Crunchbase data. Investors are therefore betting that Postmates has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in new value this year; that casts a positive spin on the firm’s trajectory.

That it is now able to, presumably, delay its IPO with a fresh infusion of private capital is more neutral. It’s hard to tell from the outside if the company is taking advantage of inexpensive capital from a ready source, for example. Or, if the delivery shop couldn’t quite get its IPO ducks in a row, leading it to take on more private capital in the interim.

Postmates has now raised around $900 million, all-in. The firm will crest the billion-dollars-raised mark when it eventually goes public.

The IPO

Postmates’ privately filed IPO is more interesting than most companies’ individual S-1 filings. Aside from Uber Eats‘ portion of Uber’s earnings, it’s hard to tell how the on-demand unicorn cohort is performing financially.

And there are billions of dollars at stake with Postmates and DoorDash grappling with each other for market share (more here on DoorDash.). With Postmates openly working on going public, full financial results for one of the best-known on-demand companies felt within reach. Now they appear further away.

Postmates’ new round means it has the capital it needs to keep growing outside of the public eye. But when it or another company of similar ilk does go public, expect nearly every VC in the industry to watch carefully. A lot of their collected bets are riding on those IPOs doing well.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.