The IPO Market Is Moving Again

When I joined Crunchbase News in August 2019, I wrote a lot about IPOs. It seemed like every week I was covering something IPO related–an S-1 analysis, company pricing stories, and recaps of how the first day of trading went. Last year was notable, with many high profile companies going public. I, perhaps naively, thought the same would hold true for tech IPOs (despite it being an election year).

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But the COVID-19 pandemic upended pretty much everything, and tech IPOs were effectively halted. When ZoomInfo and Vroom went public recently, they were very well received (a good thing, but it also meant their shares were not priced high enough and money was left on the table).

Activity has picked up a bit and last week there were reports of a slew of venture-backed tech, or tech-ish companies, looking to go public. Many filed S-1 registration statements confidentially, while Lemonade, for example, filed its S-1 publicly (you can read more here). It’s too soon to tell how the rest of the year will shake out and if more companies will follow suit, but we now have *some* IPOs to look forward to for the rest of the year.

Snowflake

Valuation: $12.4 billion

Some Investors: Dragoneer Investment Group, Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ Capital

IPO Details: Bloomberg reported last week that the cloud data company had filed confidentially for an IPO, which could come within months. The startup is reportedly in talks with potential underwriters.

Amwell Health

Valuation: Unknown

Investors: Inventure Partners, Allianz X

IPO Details: The Massachusetts-based company confidentially filed to go public after seeing a surge in users, CNBC reported on June 4. The increase makes sense, as more people turn to telemedicine amid the coronavirus pandemic and states relax regulations for telehealth access. The question, of course, is if the popularity of telemedicine is sustainable post-pandemic. Amwell Health most recently raised $194 million with its Series C extension just last month.

Palantir Technologies

Valuation: Around $26 billion

Investors: Oakhouse Partners, Founders Fund, REV

IPO Details: The notoriously secret startup co-founded by Peter Thiel is reportedly aiming to file confidentially for an IPO in the next couple of weeks, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. Palantir looking to go public, especially this year, isn’t that shocking–CEO Alex Karp said on Axios on HBO last month that the company could go public within a year. Filing confidentially within the next few weeks would certainly expedite that process.

Lemonade

Valuation: $2 billion

Investors: Softbank, Allianz, Sequoia Capital Israel

IPO Details: Lemonade is the lone company on this list to have filed an S-1 publicly. The startup, which uses AI and “behavioral economics” to calculate insurance rates for  homeowners and renters insurance is not profitable, but is a darling in the insuretech world. It insured 425,000 homes in 2018, and saw its revenue grow nearly 200 percent in 2019. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are among its underwriters.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias