The Zhitong Finance App learned that Rubrik (RBRK.US), a cloud computing and data security startup supported by Microsoft (MSFT.US), is expected to be listed on the NYSE on Thursday under the stock code RBRK. The company's initial public offering (IPO) price was higher than market expectations, and the scale of the offering was slightly increased, raising a total of 752 million US dollars.

According to a statement, Rubrik originally planned to sell 23 million shares at a price of $28 to $31 per share, but eventually sold them for $32. The company also issued an additional 500,000 shares late Wednesday, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Based on the issued shares listed in Rubrik's filing, Rubrik's market capitalization is approximately $5.6 billion at the IPO price. Including stock options and restricted stocks, the company's fully diluted valuation exceeds US$6.6 billion. According to reports, Goldman Sachs Group, Barclays Bank, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo Bank are leading the offering.

According to foreign media reports earlier, the number of orders Rubrik has received in this offering is about 20 times the number of existing shares, and the company is considering selling these shares at a price of 34 US dollars per share.

Rubrik is responsible for protecting the data security of enterprise customers in enterprise, cloud, and SaaS applications. It is reported that this will be the second-largest US stock IPO for enterprise software startups in the past two years. Previously, Shopify (SHOP.US) -supported marketing and data automation provider Klaviyo ended its listing shortage in September last year with a $659 million distribution scale.

The wave of artificial intelligence

Rubrik is catching up with the 2024 tech IPOs. This wave includes companies such as Reddit (RDDT.US), semiconductor equipment manufacturer Astera Labs (ALAB.US), and software marketing company Ibotta (IBTA.US), which went through an IPO last week.

Reddit's revenue sources include the sale of data licenses for AI model training. The recent surge in demand for the AI boom has also stimulated market optimism, and its US$860 million IPO was also a huge success. Artificial intelligence has also prompted industry giants such as Salesforce to bet on a new round of technology investment, which may also benefit companies such as Rubrik. Rubrik is still unprofitable after contract spending in the software industry declined.

Rubrik was founded in 2013 and released its first product in 2016. The company said it currently has more than 6,100 customers, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and Citibank. The company's customers include governments and universities, as well as a range of companies such as Home Depot (HD.US), Pepsi (PEP.US), Illumina (ILMN.US), Fietzsche Financial Services (FI.US), and the National Football League's Denver Broncos (National Football League's Denver Broncos).

Microsoft takes a stake

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft made an equity investment in Rubrik in 2021, and the funding round valued the startup at $4 billion. According to data provider PitchBook, Rubrik's supporters also include Bain Capital Ventures (Bain Capital Ventures), Lightspeed Venture Partners (Lightspeed Venture Partners), Greylock Partners, and Khosla Ventures, which have raised $1.18 billion so far.

Rubrik's CEO and Chairman Bipul Sinha (Bipul Sinha) is also one of the company's co-founders. He currently holds 7.6% of the company's Class B shares. Co-founder and CTO Arvind Nithrakashyap holds 6.7% of the shares. Each of these shares will have 20 votes, while Class A shares sold in an initial public offering will have only 1 vote per share.

Through an alliance with Microsoft, Rubrik promised to invest $220 million over a period of 10 years to use Microsoft's cloud computing platform Azure. According to Rubrik's submission, the company will use Azure to provide data security solutions and prioritize Azure's public cloud capabilities to customers.

Rubrik recorded a net loss of $354 million and negative free cash flow of $24.5 million in the year ending January 31, despite a 47% increase in recurring revenue for the year ending January 31, according to documents submitted by Rubrik.

The boom in IPOs

It is worth mentioning that when Rubrik went public, the boom in the US stock IPO market may have helped investment sentiment. When Klaviyo went public, the IPO environment in 2023 was uncertain, and it was below the launch price for most of the time after listing. In contrast, Rubrik will enter the US stock market against the backdrop of a broad rise in the US IPO market.

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, since the beginning of this year, companies listed on US exchanges have raised more than $12.2 billion, more than double the same period in 2023. In addition, more than 20 companies have raised more than 100 million US dollars, covering various fields from sporting goods to safety testing.