This week Airbnb announced that it has filed a private petition to go public, putting the famous unicorn on a path for a quick IPO if it so desires. The recent move matches reports indicating that the new home sharing model may still go public in 2020 despite the collapse of the travel industry.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch or receive The Exchange's newsletter every Saturday.But Airbnb it's not the only noteworthy venture-backed company that is looking to go public right now, or that has filed a private petition to go public. In fact, so many unicorns are trying to get out the door in the next quarter or two, I've started losing track of their status.
So, this morning, we round up a recap of every unicorn that has privately presented, is expected to debut soon, or may go public in the next year or two. Let's talk first about Airbnb, Asana, ThredUp, Qualtrics, Palantir and Ant, and then more freely about the huge group of companies that could go public before the end of 2022, such as UIPath, Intercom and, of course, Robinhood.
Today is Friday, which means we can afford to take a minute, focus, and make sure we're ready for the news that will inevitably bring next week. So let's complain and have some fun.
Upcoming Unicorn IPOs
To keep it digestible, we will proceed in bulleted list format. Starting with the most important news, let's remember the decline and recovery of Airbnb, starting with the revenue numbers:
- Airbnb has filed for listing and is expected to raise capital on its debut. Although its repository is currently private, the company likely wouldn't start the process so early in its recovery from COVID-19-related issues if it didn't intend to move forward. So, we can anticipate a pretty quick offer as long as things don't change again. According to Bloomberg, Airbnb's second-quarter revenue fell by at least 67% from $ 1 billion or more to $ 335 million over the period. So, the story of the late second quarter and third quarter rebound are likely the strength Airbnb intends to rely on when it debuts.