Shares of Rubrik went public on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, debuting at $38 a share. The cybersecurity company priced its shares at $32 apiece on Wednesday night, just a hair above its original target range of $29 to $31, after raising $752 million. This share price gives Rubrik a fully diluted valuation of $6.6 billion, up 88% from its last initial valuation of $3.5 billion in 2019.
The stock settled at $37 a share in late trading on Thursday.
Rubrik sells cloud-based security software to enterprise customers and has 1,700 customers with contracts worth more than $100,000 and 100 customers who pay the company more than $1 million annually. The Silicon Valley startup was founded in 2014 and has raised more than $550 million in venture capital, according to data from Crunchbase.
The VCs most hopeful that Rubrik’s stock continues to rise are Lightspeed and Greylock. Lightspeed has backed the company in five separate rounds, including the company’s first Series A round in 2015. Lightspeed, and its affiliates, own 23.9% of Rubrik’s pre-IPO shares, according to the filing the company’s S-1 filing. Firms’ confidence in the company may stem from the fact that Rubrik co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha was a former Lightspeed partner from 2010 to 2014. Sinha holds a 7.6% stake.
Greylock owns 12.2% of Rubrik’s shares. The venture capital firm led the startup’s $41 million Series B round in 2016 and also participated in Series C and Series D rounds. Greylock partner Asheem Chandna has been on the company’s board since 2015.
Apart from Sinha, the other two co-founders of Rubrik hold significant stakes. Arvind Jain, a co-founder who is now the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Glean, owns a 7% stake. Arvind Nithrakashyap, co-founder and current CTO of Rubrik, owns 6.7%.
Other big name VCs backed the company as well. Khosla Ventures led Rubrik’s Series C round in 2016. IVP led the company’s Series D round in 2017. and Bain Capital Ventures led the company’s Series E round in 2019. It’s unclear what percentage of equity they still hold to own these companies, but is below 5%, as none of these investors were named in the company’s S-1. NBA all-star Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures was also an investor.
The results of Rubrik’s IPO are subject to more scrutiny than some of the other recent IPOs because Rubrik’s debut looks more like a 2021 IPO and less like the other 2024 IPOs. Ibotta debuted as a profitable company. Astera Labs and Reddit both recently tilted to GAAP net income. Rubrik, however, is an unprofitable business as its losses continue to grow, not shrink.
The company said its revenue rose just under 5% from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024, rising from $599.8 million to $627.9 million. At the same time, the company’s losses continued to grow: Net losses rose from 46% in FY2023 to 56% in FY2024.
However, the company’s metrics have one bright spot: subscription revenue. In the company’s most recent fiscal quarter, subscriptions made up 91% of revenue, up from 73% a year earlier. Subscription revenue tends to be flat, and growth there could explain why some investors are more confident about Rubrik’s future prospects despite its current losses and lack of profitability.
Rubrik is the fourth venture-backed company to go public in recent months as investors appear eager to reopen the IPO market. All three of Rubrik’s predecessors — Ibotta, Reddit and Astera Labs — appeared on the first day of trading and have since settled, some in better positions than others. However, neither was a disaster or a negative omen for other potential IPOs this year.
While four positive IPO debuts could force more companies off the sidelines, current guidance that rate cuts may not come until 2024 as many had predicted may curb the IPO market’s recent momentum.
