Slack has finally filed to go public, in what will be one of the most hotly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs) from the technology industry in 2019.
The San Francisco-based cloud collaboration platform, which was launched back in 2013, was one of a number of technology companies expected to go public in 2019. Other notable names include Lyft and Uber, both of which confidentially filed for their respective IPOs back in December, while Pinterest and Airbnb are also expected to announce their arrivals on the public stock market later this year.
Slack is continuing with this recent trend by filing its Form S-1 confidentially too — the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) started allowing companies of any size to file confidentially back in 2017, having previously restricted this to smaller firms with revenue of less than $1 billion.
“The public listing is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions,” Slack said in a press release.
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A Reuters report from December indicated that Slack, which has raised around $1 billion in venture capital (VC) funding, had hired Goldman Sachs for its IPO, and was seeking a valuation of “well over” $10 billion. Additionally, Slack could become the second major technology company in the space of a year to pursue a direct listing, according to reports, after Spotify did so last year.
