Plaid IPO: Will Plaid Stock Finally Trade in 2025?

Explore opportunities to invest in the startup before the Plaid IPO — now anticipated in 2025 or later. Buy and sell pre-IPO startup shares at Hiive. Monitor share availability or place a bid for the sellers to find you.

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Recent Plaid News

03/04/2024: No Plaid IPO for 2024
02/08/2024: Plaid Names First Company President
11/02/2023: Plaid weighs IPO
10/18/2023: Plaid Spokesperson: ‘no timeline’ for IPO‘
Older news…

About Plaid

Plaid is a financial technology (fintech) company that enables seamless connections between customers, financial institutions, fintech apps, and developers.

Plaid builds application programming interfaces (APIs) for the financial industry, including banking, lending, and investing services.  

Beyond APIs, Plaid is becoming an analytics company, providing its customers with user insights and data.

The company has become a must-use platform for fintech, empowering developers at startups and legacy financial institutions to deliver a beautiful user experience. 

Plaid is one of several fintech upcoming IPOs riding the wave of financial innovation and improved customer engagement. 

Plaid was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey. Its headquarters are in San Francisco. 

Here’s an overview video of Plaid’s mission:

Ownership

The shareholders include founders, early investors (venture capital firms), and employees.

Prominent venture capital investors include Spark Capital, Google Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Goldman Sachs, Mary Meeker, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, J.P. Morgan, American Express, Altimeter Capital, Silver Lake Capital, Visa, and Mastercard. 

Now that the Visa acquisition won’t occur, Plaid must determine its path to a public future. 

The company can pursue alternative suitors, conduct a traditional IPO (or direct listing), or solicit offers to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Funding Rounds

WordPress Data Table Plugin

Valuation

The last confirmed Plaid valuation is $13.4 billion during its Series D round. However, private market data provided by Caplight and Hiive suggest the valuation has fallen considerably since April 2021. 

Plaid has raised more than $734 million of private financing. The company raised $425 million, led by Altimeter Capital and Silver Lake.

A more realistic Plaid valuation as of mid 2024 is estimated to be closer to $5 billion.

IPO Potential

The Plaid IPO date is currently unknown. It hired its first CFO in October 2023, indicating an IPO could be on its radar. 

However, in March 2024, Plaid, CEO Zach Perret told Lucinda Shen of Axios the company would not IPO in 2024, pushing a potential IPO to 2025 at the earliest. It may also be an acquisition candidate. 

A spokesperson for Plaid told TechCrunch in October 2023: 

We do not have any plans to IPO at this time…It will be a milestone we consider at some point, but no timeline to share.

At the Money 20/20 conference, Plaid CEO told Fortune in late October:

We certainly would consider going public. We haven’t attached a timeframe to that. An IPO is certainly an aspiration of ours. There are some good options out there. We’ll do the work and figure out what the right answer is for us.

We won’t get a better sense of when the Plaid IPO will be until one of a few things happens:

1. The Plaid IPO date range leaks to the financial press
2. Plaid submits a confidential S-1 filing to the SEC (and announces/leaks the news)
3. The SEC releases a publicly-available Plaid S-1 filing

We may get other clues, such as when Plaid selects a lead underwriter for the IPO. Announcements such as these would indicate the IPO is within six to twelve months.

Even when the company and SEC publicly release the S-1 filing, we still won’t know a firm date. However, the IPO date typically occurs a month or so after the S-1 is released to the public.

Bookmark this page for the latest Plaid IPO news.

How to Buy Plaid Stock

Generally, it’s challenging to acquire shares of high-demand IPOs. Most investors will need to settle for buying the stock after it begins trading. 

IPO underwriters typically give their best customers access first, then allocate shares to certain institutions and brokers, often tied by professional relationships. 

When the largest brokers receive IPO shares, they divvy them up amongst their eligible customers, prioritizing their most valued customers first (wealthiest). 

For high-demand IPOs, most investors will not get shares. But there are a few ways to own the stock headed into the IPO and afterward. 

With that, here are three potential ways to own Plaid Stock: 

• Access shares via pre-IPO investing platforms
• Buy Plaid stock after it begins trading
• Buy Plaid stock in the Plaid IPO through a broker

1. Access shares via pre-IPO investing platforms

Founders, early employees, and investors often find themselves in a difficult predicament. They own valuable shares of a company that doesn’t trade publicly. 

These shareholders might have multi-million dollar net worth because of their stock holdings, but the stock is not liquid because it doesn’t trade on an exchange. 

A few platforms have evolved to give these individuals a way to liquidate their holdings before the IPO.

Prominent investing platforms include Hiive, Linqto, EquityZen, and Forge Global.

Non-accredited investors can sidestep the SEC requirements and own pre-IPO companies via venture capital funds targeted to retail investors.

The Fundrise Innovation Fund (review) is the most promising of these funds for patient, long-term investors. The Fund owns multiple pre-IPO startups for a diversified portfolio.

Fundrise intends to grow this portfolio slowly and aims to offer investors long-term returns that outpace the stock market. 

Plaid is not a current holding in the Fund. However, the company has indicated that financial technology (fintech) companies will be a foundational target sector.  

Please note: This is a testimonial in partnership with Fundrise. We earn a commission from partner links on AccessIPOs.com. All opinions are my own.

Learn more about pre-IPO investing.

2. Buy Plaid stock after the IPO

Since acquiring IPO shares is almost always challenging for individual investors, the easiest way to own Plaid stock is to wait for the IPO to complete. 

Realistically, unless your brokerage account is worth more than $1 million and your broker regularly receives IPO allocations, you are unlikely to get in on high-demand IPOs. 

In some cases, patient investors can buy the stock at or below the IPO price. This is not always true.

Uber, which many predicted to rise steeply, actually fell on the IPO date.

Spending significant effort to acquire IPO shares may not be worth it in the end. You may also spend time and effort to obtain shares but only receive a small allocation, limiting upside gain. 

Though IPOs can provide one-day gains north of 20%, even up to 100% in rare cases (such as Airbnb and Doordash), the most significant gains will come during the decade following the IPO if the company is genuinely disruptive.

Take, for example, Netflix, Amazon, or Tesla. You could have bought the stock years after the IPO and still experienced gains of more than 1,000%

If you’re an investor who wants to buy Plaid stock for the long term, consider opening a position after the IPO and averaging down if the stock falls. 

Short-term traders may angle to acquire IPO shares and hope for a short-term pop.

3. Participate in the Plaid IPO through a broker

Ambitious investors can position themselves to invest in the Plaid IPO once it arrives.  

Your chances of getting IPO shares depends on four factors:

• IPO demand
• Your broker and eligibility
• Your assets under management at the broker
• Propensity to flip shares

As IPO demand increases, the chances of receiving IPO shares decrease. Therefore, the IPOs that are most interesting to the masses are the hardest to access. 

Most online brokers do not offer IPO shares. Check directly to see if yours does, or look at our list of best brokers for IPO investing. 

Legacy brokers, such as Fidelity and Charles Schwab, have minimum eligibility requirements and penalties for flipping shares (selling shortly after the IPO). 

But even if eligible, the brokers must sub-allocate whatever limited shares they receive from the IPO underwriters.

This process is non-transparent, but priority is often given to the wealthiest investors first. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Plaid Publicly Traded?

No, Plaid is not publicly traded. Plaid is a private company.

What is the Plaid Stock Price?

Since Plaid is not publicly traded on a stock exchange, there is no public Plaid stock price yet.

The last funding round, a Series D, took place in April 2021 at $582 per share. August 2024 data from pre-IPO marketplaces suggest the price is close to $160, down significantly. 

What is the Plaid Stock Symbol?

Plaid has not yet submitted public filings to the SEC. Therefore, it is not yet known what the Plaid stock symbol will be. We can only speculate.

Here is one possibility that appears to be available in the U.S.:

• PLAD

Where can I find the Plaid S-1 Filing?

The Plaid S-1 filing won’t be publicly available until released. Once it is public, we’ll post it here. 

You can find a real-time SEC feed of the latest IPO filings from other companies on the recent S-1 filings page.

What Happened to the Visa Acquisition of Plaid?

On January 13th, 2020, Visa announced it was acquiring Plaid for $5.3 billion. However, in November of the same year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit to block the deal, citing antitrust concerns. 

The DOJ believed that Visa was attempting to acquire Plaid to eliminate a competitive threat.

On January 12th, 2021, the companies abandoned the deal. 

The antitrust lawsuit, combined with the perceived increase in Plaid’s valuation (especially in light of the Airbnb and Doordash IPOs in late 2020), was the likely cause.

Shortly after the announcement to part ways, reports of offers to buy Plaid shares surfaced at a $15 billion valuation.

The design SaaS startup Figma is facing a similar scenario due to anti-trust concerns with its merger with Adobe.

Plaid News Archive

12/07/2022: Plaid lays off 20% of staff
05/17/2022: Plaid Ranked #47 on CNBC’s 2022 Disruptor 50 List
05/12/2022: Stripe takes a swing at Plaid
01/24/2022: Plaid must pay $58 million to users of Venmo, Robinhood
01/20/2022: Plaid Scoops Up Cognito for $250 Million
08/17/2021: Plaid’s $425 Million Series D Round Attracts More Investors
08/17/2021: JPMorgan Bets on Plaid Months After Dimon’s Data Criticism
04/07/2021: Plaid valuation tops $13 billion in first funding after Visa
04/02/2021: Plaid Is Said Close to Financing at About $13 Billion Valuation
03/04/2021: Income verification is white-hot right now, and Plaid wants in
01/21/2021: Plaid Shareholders Field Offers at $15 Billion After Merger Collapse
01/12/2021: Visa abandons takeover of Plaid after DOJ raises antitrust concerns

Additional Resources

• 11 Fintech startups in the IPO Pipeline

Conclusion

Investors get enthusiastic about investing in companies in high-growth areas such as fintech. Plaid is a long-time leader in the space, though partners with competitors that provide similar services such as Cross River Bank. 

But buying the stock of a non-public company is far more challenging than normal stock investing due to a lack of financial information and liquidity. 

Pre-IPO platforms now provide investors more with investment opportunities, though venture capital investment is still primarily reserved for the ultra-wealthy and VC firms. 

Non-accredited retail investors can look to venture capital  funds like the Fundrise Innovation Fund to access pre-IPO startups. But Plaid is not a current holding.

When pursuing IPO shares or early equity in companies like Plaid, maintain reasonable expectations that you may not discover any opportunities to invest in Plaid stock. 

Join and monitor pre-IPO platforms for the latest availability. 

Invest in pre-IPO and IPO companies with caution. Good luck if the Plaid IPO is on your watch list.

* Disclosure: The web page contains affiliate links from our partners. If a reader opens an account or buys a service from a link in this article, we may be compensated at no additional cost to the reader. Opening an account with a broker that provides access to IPOs does not guarantee the customer allocations of specific IPOs. The author is long V, MA, TSLA, ABNB, BYND.