Last year’s investors’ dreams of a strong 2024 IPO pipeline have faded, if not disappeared entirely, as we approach the halfway point of the year.
2024 delivered four venture-backed tech IPOs, Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik, in March and April, making it look like this year could spur the momentum investors were hoping for in 2023. But secondary investors and IPO lawyers recently told TechCrunch that despite these four successes, macroeconomic conditions like the upcoming presidential election and rising interest rates mean the IPO market won’t fully open 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.
For the most part, it can be easier to decipher who is not is going public this year despite who he is. Some startup CEOs have said outright that they won’t go public in 2024, while other companies have made financial moves that suggest an IPO isn’t imminent. Here are some of the venture-backed tech companies we don’t expect to go public this year.
- Cart CEO Zach Perret said the B2B fintech had there are no plans for an IPO in 2024 at an Axios event in March. This echoes what TechCrunch’s Mary Ann Azevedo reported last October after the hiring of a new CFO. Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in 2021, its most recent valuation.
- While he drew a unicorn Figma hasn’t directly said it won’t IPO this year, its actions point in that direction. In May, the company held a special offer to allow existing investors and employees to sell Figma shares, if they wish, in the secondary market. This type of liquidity event generally does not come right before the largest liquidity event of an IPO. The offer did value the startup at $12.5 billion, which is lower than the $20 billion Adobe was willing to pay, but higher than the last initial valuation Figma received, $10 billion.
- Film it also auctioned off 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 that’s lower than the $95 billion valuation the company raised in 2021, the company backs its valuation. This is a sign that Stripe will likely try to boost that valuation a bit more before going public.
- AI cloud platform Data bricks it’s not likely to launch until 2024 either — perhaps to the chagrin of VC investors who last year predicted it would be the first company to go public. The company raised $500 million in new capital last fall in a Series I round that valued the startup at $43 billion. While companies generally don’t raise funding right before an IPO—that’s part of the IPO process, after all—the investors they drew from this round were crossover investors like T.Rowe Price. These are not the kind of investors who tend to oppose an IPO when market conditions improve, they are in good shape to be one of the first listings of 2025 if they choose.
- Canva It’s not likely to go public until at least next year, and the design startup may very well wait until 2026. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht, the husband of Canva CEO Melanie Perkins said Start Dailya tech publication in Australia and New Zealand in March that an IPO would be at least 12 months away, if not sometime in 2026. Lucky for US investors, however, Obrecht also confirmed that when the startup looks to exit in the stock market will do so in the US
TechCrunch is following the startup and exit markets in the latter stage and will continue to update this article. If you have any tips or messages to consider, please contact me here: rebecca.szkutak@techcrunch.com.
