So much for a December news slowdown.
The last few days have been so chock-a-block with news from a host of unicorns, we’ve all fallen behind. This morning, The Exchange is going into summary mode to help us better understand the full scope of recent unicorn activity.
Why unicorns? It would be fun to noodle on early-stage news — Salut raised $1.25 million this week and BuildBuddy picked up $3.15 million — but as we’re in the midst of an IPO cycle and 2021 could have even more public debuts than 2020, we have to keep current on unicorn updates.
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What will we cover, then? We’ll go back to Stripe’s possible new round and new valuation. We’ll touch on DoorDash and Airbnb’s expected IPO pricing, along with what we’ve learned from C3.ai’s own S-1 filings. There’s also Gainsight to talk about and the Slack -Salesforce deal.
That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There’s also recent news from Coinbase, Tanium, Postmates, Olive, Scale AI, Sinch, Gitlab and Kustomer. Then there are rounds for HungryPanda, Flock Freight and Flexe that might make them unicorns — or something rather close. (Update: Also Bizzabo, apparently.)
You can see why it all feels a little overwhelming. But don’t worry, we can get caught up together. Let’s go!
A cavalcade of unicorn updates
There’s no way to make it through all of this news in a reasonable number of words without employing bullet points. Out of respect for your time, I’ll be brief. That said, each of the following news items is worth digging into further if it catches your fancy.
Financial news
- C3.ai dropped an initial pricing range for its IPO. Given how far the company’s growth has slowed, C3.ai’s comfortable expected IPO valuation underscores how interested public markets are in software and tech shops. As far as a bellwether public offering, we have our eyes fixed on C3 and its expected debut that should come next week.
- DoorDash also released an initial price range this week with a valuation that could stretch to $32 billion on a fully diluted basis. Simpler share counts give the company a valuation of between $23.8 billion and $27 billion at its $75 to $85 per share price target. Regardless of how you prefer to calculate market caps of public companies, DoorDash is expected to see a huge valuation bump in its debut. That’s great news for its investors and employees alike.
- Stripe could be worth $100 billion in its next fundraise. We don’t have new gross payment volume data from the company, but its top line has to be in the billions given what we knew a while back. Why doesn’t Stripe go public? The only good answer to that question is, I reckon, that it is investing in some super complicated stuff that won’t pay off for a while, so it’s taking its time to set up for an even more glorious future as a public company. If it is just being shy, I’ll be cross.
- Airbnb is back, baby! That’s pretty much all you need to know. In more granular detail, the company’s valuation could stretch to $35 billion in its IPO, though if you don’t count unexercised options and the like, the numbers run between $26.2 billion to $30.1 billion. No matter: The company’s IPO will be executed at a multiple of its midcrisis valuation and can only be viewed as an impending fundraising success story. I have zero idea how the company will trade after floating, but Airbnb is about to raise quite a lot of much cheaper capital than it managed earlier in the year.
Alex Wilhelm
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