After more than a year of very little activity, the market for initial public offerings cracked open a bit a couple of weeks ago when restaurant group called Cava debuted.
Some observers considered it an early sign of some thawing, but it's still an open question as to when the market for big tech IPOs might resume.
San Francisco-based car sharing company Turo filed for an IPO at the beginning of 2022 and disclosed heavy net losses. And in 2021, San Mateo-based biotech Sagimet Biosciences filed plans to go public. Neither company has debuted yet.
It could be another year before we really start seeing the market open up for those big tech IPOs, but here are a dozen Bay Area companies to keep on eye on in the meantime.
Bay Area IPO Watch 2023/2024
Founded by CEO Ali Ghodsi, San Francisco-based data management and analytics company Databricks has raised $3.5 billion and was valued at $38 billion in 2021.
Todd Johnson | San Francisco Business Times
Former Amazon executive Dave Clark joined San Francisco-based logistics company Flexport in 2022. The company has raised $2.5 billion and was valued at $8 billion in 2022.
Dan DeLong | for the Nashville Business Journal
South San Francisco-based Stripe has seemingly shelved its IPO plans, for now, and raised $6.5 billion in a Series I round in 2023.
Stripe
Long tipped as an IPO candidate, San Francisco-based Instacart confidentially filed for an IPO in early 2022 but never moved forward before slashing its internal valuation several times that year. As of April 2023, the company reportedly valued itself at $12 billion, down from $40 billion at the beginning of 2022.
Instacart
San Francisco-based wholesale marketplace Faire has raised $1.26 billion and was valued at more than $12 billion in 2022.
Faire
Burlingame-based mental health services provider Lyra Health has raised more than $900 million and was valued at $5.85 billion in 2022.
Lyra Health
South San Francisco-based Plenty Unlimited has raised $941 million and was valued at more than $1.4 billion in 2022.
Jim Vetter Photography
In April 2023, San Francisco-based blockchain developer Chia Network confidentially filed to go public. It has raised $112 million and was valued at $455 million in 2022.
Chia Networks
San Francisco-based car sharing company Turo filed for an IPO at the beginning of 2022 and disclosed heavy net losses. As of June 2023, it hasn't debuted yet.
Todd Johnson | San Francisco Business Times
San Francisco-based social media site Reddit confidentially filed for a public debut in 2021 but subsequently delayed. The company has raised $1.3 billion and was valued at $10 billion in 2021.
Jason Henry/The New York Times
San Francisco-based health tech developer Komodo Health has raised around $527 million and was valued at $3.3 billion in 2021.
Komodo Health f
San Francisco-based Plaid has raised more than $730 million and was valued at more than $13 billion in 2021.
Plaid
Formerly known as TripActions, Palo Alto-based Navan, which provides corporate travel management services, has raised a little over $2 billion, including a $100 million debt round. It was valued at more than $9 billion in 2022.
Job Portraits | Courtesy of TripActions
A private market index from Forge Global shows cautious optimism in the tech industry, but there's not likely to be a surge of tech IPOs in the second half of the year, Forge Global's head of investment solutions Howe Ng told me.
There's still very little clarity in the markets, and one of the biggest indicators that the market is ready for some big tech IPOs will actually come from early-stage venture capital rounds, Jason Mok told me.
Mok is the new head of startups at Brex after spending a couple of years as an operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz and nearly two decades at Silicon Valley Bank.
"I'm pretty clear that you won't see big-name companies filing for an IPO until you see other big financings at the series A and the Bs start to happen," Mok told me. "The flywheel needs to start early, and the confidence needs to come from the earlier stage."
That flywheel had ground nearly to a halt. Only two Bay Area companies went public in the first quarter of the year, Fremont-based Nextracker and Structure Therapeutics, and 2022 wasn't much better.
Five Bay Area companies debuted last year, which was a sharp decline from a record high of 64 in 2021.