TLDR
You may have heard of the 12 Days of Christmas, but instead of partridges in a pear tree, here is our 12 Days of Venture Capital for 2024.
Happy Holiday Season to all!
2024 had its share of ups and downs. Overall, the startup landscape exits the year with optimism due to a mass of AI funding, a handful of successful tech IPOs, and a more robust pre-IPO liquidity market. Most everyone, including Goldman Sachs, is predicting an up year for VC in 2025. In the holiday spirit, we will continue what we now consider a tradition: The 12 Days of Venture Capital (2 is a tradition right?).
12 Startups Eyeing 2025 IPOs.
Last year, we named 12 companies that hoped to IPO in 2024. 3 of them exited: Reddit, Rubrik, and Ibotta, and 4 remain on the list this year (denoted by *).
Our list of IPO hopefuls for 2025: Cerebras, Chime, CoreWeave, Hinge Health, Klarna*, MNTN, Netskope, Omada Health, SeatGeek*, Service Titan*, ShipBob, and Turo*
11 US Startups Acquired for more than $1B.
Exit pathways for startups began to open up in 2024, most notably for the following companies who were acquired for more than $1B - signs that there is appetite for late stage ventures looking for an exit.
2024 >$1B M&As: Aiolos Bio, Bridge, Carmot Therapeutics, HI-Bio, Inhibrx, Kate Therapeutics, Own Company, Nerio Therapeutics, OpenGov, Profundbio, Tabular
10 US Startups raised $1B+ funding rounds.
VC funding technically is on pace to be down or flat compared to 2023, but a select group of companies had no trouble raising money.
Anduril, Anthropic, CoreWeave, Epic Games, OpenAI, Safe Superintelligence, Scale AI, Waymo, xAI, and Xaira Therapeutics all raised rounds exceeding $1B in funding.
$99.8K - $99.8k set a new All Time High for Bitcoin.
We were hoping it would reach $100K, but a new infusion of bullish sentiment about crypto has been fed by president-elect Trump’s pro-crypto stance. Beyond the presidency, Crypto investors poured money into a PAC that backed pro-crypto politicians in their respective races. There is a lot of optimism about 2025, and crypto is back in vogue, at the forefront of that bullish sentiment. Crazy stat of the day: at the time of writing this, there are 124 coins with a market cap above $1B…
8 Major company tenders offers (more on this later).
Canva, Coreweave, Databricks, Figma, OpenAI, Rippling, SpaceX, and Stripe all hosted company sponsored liquidity events for their shareholders. Notably, most of these companies held these tenders to provide liquidity for long time shareholders. Offering liquidity to employees allows the company to make their people happy while maintaining the ability to go public on their on terms.
7 2024 Tech IPOs.
Astera Labs (ALAB), Ibotta (IBTA), Pony.ai (PONY), Reddit (RDDT), Rubrik (RBRK), Tempus AI (TEM), and WeRide (WRD) all IPO’ed in 2024. 5 of the 7 stocks are currently trading above their IPO price. This should be a great sign for any prospective IPOs in 2025.
$6.6B raised by OpenAI.
We’ve talked about OpenAI ad nauseam, but we had to mention the LARGEST VENTURE CAPITAL ROUND EVER one final time.
$5B raised by xAI.
This raise may not have taken the top spot (or even xAI’s top raise to date), but it is still a massive amount of capital and helps to showcase just how much money has flowed into AI projects this year.
$4B raised by Anthropic.
Ditto on Anthropic. Just huge numbers across the board for AI.
3 US Venture Funds raised over $3B in 2024.
A16z Growth, ARCH Venture Fund XIII, and General Catalyst Group XII are all 2024 funds exceeding the $3B mark. 4 others raised funds over $1B, but we already had the number 7 covered.
2 Rate Cuts.
Last year, our number 8 was 80% chance of a rate cut in 2024. That turned out to be spot on and we saw 2 rate cuts this year. A third seems likely but still up in the air as we approach the December Fed meetings. FWIW the markets are pricing in a quarter percentage point cut.
$1B+ of secondary market sales in 2024
We don’t yet have Q4 data, but as of October 2024, Caplight estimates that private company secondary sales have exceeded the $1B mark (up 29% YoY). This market is yet another way employees of startups can get liquid.
Why this matters: Overall there are 3 main themes here:
1) AI: duh.
2) Optimism: There is optimism about more IPOs in 2025. Crypto stands to benefit heavily from the new administration. Finally, projected less antitrust issues and strong US-first policies should be positive for investors.
3) Pre-IPO Liquidity: The increase of company sponsored tenders and the rise of the private secondary market offer increasingly viable liquidity solutions to employees that can’t wait for the IPO to cash in.
At ESO, we’re thankful for 2024 and excited to see how things play out in the new year. Happy Holidays!
