Jun 12, 2019
CrowdStrike raises $612 million in IPO
CrowdStrike, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cybersecurity company, raised $612 million in its IPO. It priced 18 million shares at $34, well above its $23-$30 offering range (let alone its original $19-$23 range), for an initial market cap of $6.69 billion.
Why it matters: This is the latest indication that Wall Street has a voracious appetite for money-losing tech unicorns, so long as they don't focus on ride-hail.
ROI: CrowdStrike had raised over $480 million in VC funding from firms like Warburg Pincus (30.2% pre-IPO stake), Accel (20.2%) and CapitalG (11.1%). Its last private valuation was $3.35 billion, post-money on a Series E round last summer.
The bottom line:
"CrowdStrike provides cloud-based security technology, aiming to do for security what other companies have done for human resources, customer relationship management and other sectors. The company gained notoriety after revealing that two groups with ties to Russian intelligence had breached the Democratic National Committee’s technology during the 2016 presidential campaign."— Tomio Geron, the Wall Street Journal
Go deeper: CrowdStrike files for IPO amid 2020 hacking fears