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GitLab explores sale, a new AI fund, and Kandji raises $50M

Author

Alex Wilhelm
July 17, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Top News

  • GitLab explores sale: Online git repository GitLab is exploring a sale, Reuters reports. The news sent the 2021-era IPO up around 12% in pre-market trading. Before the gains, GitLab was worth around $8 billion. GitLab went public at $77 per share and was worth just over $50 per share before the news broke. DataDog is reportedly in the mix as a potential acquirer.

  • Menlo Ventures + Anthropic: Menlo Ventures is foundation model company Anthropic’s biggest backer, and the pair are planning even more teamwork. Now the venture firm and AI company are working on a $100 million fund that will invest in early-stage AI startups. That means deal flow for Menlo, and Anthropic can seed companies that use its models to drive demand for its own products. Tidy, if expensive.

  • Kandji raises $50M: Apple device management is big business, the latest Kandji fundraising event clarifies. The company raised $50 million in equity capital and another $50 million through debt, boosting its valuation to $850 million in the process. Recall that fellow Apple device manager Jamf went public in 2020.

TWiST500

Today, we have a critical news item from the TWiST500: Klarna is gearing up for an IPO!

Yes, the FT reports that the buy now, pay later giant targets an H1 2025 IPO timeline. Put in broader terms, one of the best-known unicorns today expects the first half of next year to be a good time to go public.

That helps explain why so many late-stage startups are not listing now; waiting a half year or more is not the end of the world, and if conditions are expected to improve, why go now?

How is Klarna performing? In the first quarter, Klarna reported 17% gross merchandise volume (GMV) growth, 29% revenue growth, a 74% reduction in its net losses, and a return to adjusted operating income in the period.

What might it be worth? In USD, the company’s revenues reached about $604 million in the first quarter. Given that Klarna’s revenues are somewhat seasonal, it’s not too useful to turn that figure into a run-rate calculation. But we can say that Klarna’s rival Affirm generated $576 million worth of revenue in the same period, and is worth just over $10 billion today, albeit with faster recent growth. Still, Klarna may be able to best its most recent private-market valuation when it does list ($6.6 billion).

Will the European fintech giant live up to its all-time valuation peak when it lists? Almost certainly not. But the fact that it is going to survive and still list despite a down round should be encouraging all the same.

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This Week in Startups

E1980: A news roundtable after a historic weekend. Jason and Alex talked social media in the wake of a weekend of political violence, what some venture folks hope to get out of a second Trump administration, the Google-Wiz deal, and how Sequoia is working to cash out some of its LPs who are sitting on Stripe equity that they cannot sell.

E1979: In this news roundtable, Jason and Alex dug into StubHub’s IPO, how cooling inflation could lead to rate cuts — a potential boon for venture capital results — and OpenAI’s five levels of AI. The Microsoft-aligned company thinks that it is still pretty early in its progress in building artificial intelligence software. To close, the pair added a host of new companies to the TWiST500.

E1978: Jason sat down with Anand Nandakumar, the CEO of Halo Car to chat about the startup’s approach to driving autonomy. While many major tech companies are pursuing self-driving cars, Halo Car is more focused on teleoperation to get rental vehicles to customers. As self-driving remains a future product instead of — mostly — a present reality, it’s a timely conversation and a neat startup to boot.

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