Recent IPO Performance in 1 Chart (August 2024)

There’s some hope that IPOs may pick up before the election. We could see a handful of higher-profile companies release their S-1s after Labor Day, giving them enough time to debut before the election.

Otherwise, we’ll be waiting for the new year.

With the S&P 500 reaching new highs almost weekly, I’m scratching my head about what’s holding companies back.

We can still assume the uncertainty stems from the upcoming election, and maybe the investment banks throttling aspiring public companies, waiting for more exuberant buyers.

Groq vs. Cerebras

I published a new radar piece this week about Groq. Groq is another AI-focused chipmaker akin to Cerebras and Nvidia.

The founder developed the technology in a Google “20%” project. He eventually left Google and brought nearly all of the engineers with him.

Famed podcaster, investor, and former “SPAC King” Chamath Palihapitiya sniffed these guys out in 2016 and provided Series A funding at a $30 million valuation, then again at the Series B ($312 million valuation).

Groq is now worth $2.8 billion, with a Series D completed in early August.

Groq doesn’t make AI LLMs, but it makes them faster. You’ll hear the word “inference” about these AI chips and models. For us non-AI engineers, inference is associated with the speed at which users can interact with AI.

Groq’s inference speed was near instant, leading the industry until last week.

Then, Cerebras, the AI chip maker and Nvidia competitor that has stated plans to IPO as early as this October, claimed the lead.

The finish line for this “inference” race is “so-fast-nobody-can-tell-a-difference”.

But for our purposes, Cerebras released this announcement perhaps to build hype for its IPO.

And if Cerebras IPOs with great enthusiasm, Groq and dozens of AI companies may follow.

Cerebras and Groq are available on Linqto for a $2,500 minimum investment. Hiive has Groq and Cerebras, too, with significant liquidity and better pricing but higher minimums (>$20k).

Radar

​Neo4j — Neo4j is a graph database SaaS company. Strong use cases for data analytics, fraud detection, and social media recommendation algorithms.

​OpenAI — Is in talks (again) to raise yet another private round at $100+ billion (it hasn’t actually achieved this yet, despite frequent talks). Whisper valuations are at $125 billion. Nvidia and even Apple are looking to participate (Apple rarely invests in startups).

In Case You Missed It…

I’m publishing newsletters as blog posts now, so you can access them from my redesigned website home page.

• ​August 15th — Cerebras Confidential, Anduril Raises
• ​August 1st — The Cause of Pause?
• ​July 15th — The Hiive 50, New IPO Broker, Google Takes a Wiz
• ​July 1st — 7 Battery Startups Charging Toward IPOs

Conclusion

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