#IPO

#IPO

SpaceX and xAI, both companies led by Elon Musk, could merge ahead of a planned SpaceX IPO this year, according to a report from Reuters. This would bring products like the Grok chatbot, X platform, Starlink satellites, and SpaceX rockets together under one corporation. Company representatives have not discussed this possibility in public. However, recent filings show that two new corporate entities were established in Nevada on January 21, which are called K2 Merger Sub Inc. and K2 Merger Sub 2 LLC.

Liftoff provides a software development kit that app developers install in their apps in order to sell advertising, and a product for advertisers that uses machine learning to help them target high-quality mobile users. It grew revenue by 30% year over year to $491 million in the nine months that ended September 30. The company reported $263.3 million in adjusted earnings - a 54% margin - and a net loss of $25.6 million in that period.

Moving at superspeed isn't limited to SpaceX's rockets. Elon Musk's satellite and rocket company has secured one million new customers for its Starlink internet in under seven weeks and is now active in 155 markets, the company wrote in a post on X on Monday evening. "Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets," the company said.

It's getting to the point where even if you don't have a child under the age of 15, you should know who MrBeast is. The North Carolinian Jimmy Donaldson's MrBeast channel has over 450 million YouTube subscribers - more than any other YouTube channel - making him arguably the most successful social media star ever. So it made sense when at the DealBook Summit, reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin asked MrBeast and Jeff Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, about going public. "You want to have an IPO at some point, I imagine," said Sorkin.

When Kim Min-seok gave the go-ahead in June 2016 to publish a 90-second clip of a children's song, he had no idea what he was unleashing. It became a global phenomenon, clocking up more than 16 billion views - YouTube's most watched video ever. That song was the incredibly catchy Baby Shark. Not only has it captivated toddlers and terrorised adults around the world, it laid the foundations for its creator Pinkfong to become a media business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Priced at ₹109, the company's shares climbed as high as ₹161.99 before closing at ₹156.49, valuing the seven-year-old company at ₹448 billion (around $5 billion). That's well above its listing valuation of ₹315 billion (approximately $3.6 billion), and roughly 79% higher than its last private valuation of $2.8 billion in September 2024. The strong IPO highlights the remarkable growth arc of Physics Wallah, which started off as a YouTube channel run by founder Alakh Pandey in 2016.

Klook, a Hong Kong- and Singapore-based travel booking company, is filing for an initial public offering in New York, showing that despite the events of the past year, the U.S. remains a top listing destination for Asian companies. The company, founded in 2014 by Ethan Lin and Eric Gnock Fah, claims to be the largest experience booking platform in Asia by gross transaction volume, with 65 million experiences booked in the twelve months ending Sept. 30. In its IPO prospectus, Klook revealed that it generated $417.1 million in revenue in 2024, a 24% increase. Yet the company isn't profitable, losing $99.3 million last year.

With the company posting four straight years of losses (a cumulative $245 million), it's clear why it needed to raise cash, she writes in her Substack.

Armis, a nine-year-old cybersecurity startup based out of San Francisco, intends to follow in these companies' footsteps. The company said on Wednesday that it has raised a $435 million pre-IPO round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. CapitalG made a significant investment in the round, and new investor Evolution Equity Partners also participated. The round values Armis at $6.1 billion, a meaningful jump from the $4.5 billion tender offer valuation the startup announced in August.

Ensemble Health, a major player in healthcare revenue management, is seeking a potential $13 billion sale or IPO next year, Business Insider has learned. Ensemble, owned primarily by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners, has tapped JPMorgan to pursue a sale, five people with knowledge of the deal told Business Insider. At the same time, Ensemble is considering an IPO and has pulled in Goldman Sachs to support the dual-track approach, three of the people said.

Electric aviation startup Beta Technologies has priced shares for its initial public offering between $27 and $33, in hopes of raising as much as $825 million, according to a regulatory document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the company attracts investors at the top of that range it will debut with a valuation of about $7.2 billion.