Unicorn rodeo: 6 high-flying startups that are set to go public

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This week Airbnb announced that it has privately filed to go public, putting the famous unicorn on a path to a quick IPO if it wants. The recent move matches reporting indicating that the home-sharing upstart could yet go public in 2020 despite the collapse of the travel industry.

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But Airbnb is not the only venture-backed company of note that is looking to go public at the moment, or that has privately filed to go public. Indeed, so many unicorns are looking to get out the door in the next quarter or two, I’ve started to lose track of their status.

So, this morning, let’s gather a digest of each unicorn that has filed privately, is expected to debut shortly, or may go public in the next year or two. We’re talking Airbnb, Asana, ThredUp, Qualtrics, Palantir and Ant first, and then more loosely about the huge cadre of companies that could go public before the end of 2022, like UIPath, Intercom, and, sure, Robinhood as well.

Today is Friday, which means we can afford to take a minute, center ourselves and make sure that we’re ready for the news that next week will inevitably bring. So let’s repine and have a little fun.

Upcoming unicorn IPOs

In order to keep this digestible, we’ll proceed in bulleted-list format. Starting with the biggest news, let’s remind ourselves of Airbnb’s decline and recovery, starting with revenue numbers:

• Airbnb has filed to go public and is expected to raise capital in its debut. While its filing is currently private, the company likely wouldn’t kickstart the process this early in its recovery from COVID-19-related issues if it didn’t mean to follow through. So, we can anticipate a somewhat-speedy offering provided that things don’t change again. Airbnb’s Q2 revenue fell by at least 67% from $1 billion or more to $335 million in the period, per Bloomberg. So, the late-Q2 and Q3 rebound story are likely the strength that Airbnb intends to lean on when it does debut.