AppLovin adds to IPO boom

The IPOs keep coming. After Coinbase’s successful direct-listing debut on the Nasdaq on Wednesday — it closed at $328, well above its reference price of $250, to be worth a fully diluted $86bn — mobile games group AppLovin has just raised $1.8bn to be worth $28.6bn.

The owner of hits such as Matchington Mansion and Wordscapes priced its shares at $80 ahead of its listing on the same exchange today, giving it a market value many times higher than the $2bn at which private equity group KKR purchased a $400m stake three years ago.

Several other gaming companies rushed to tap public markets after the pandemic brought them a windfall of users. The Roblox gaming platform joined the New York Stock Exchange last month and Israeli mobile game developer Playtika listed on Nasdaq in January.

They were part of a rush to market in the first quarter, where 398 US companies had IPOs, up from just 37 last year. Three-quarters were special purpose acquisition companies. Even excluding the Spac frenzy, the first quarter eclipsed the past five years, says Lex. This does not include direct listings of Roblox and Coinbase either.

The listing mania has allowed VC firms such as Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz to cash out and gather more funding firepower to compete in a market of rapidly rising valuations for earlier stage companies.

Last year, 121 companies joined the elite group of start-ups valued at $1bn or more, according to CB Insights data. In the first three months of 2021, 78 companies hit the same target. Around the world there are now more than 600 such unicorns, led by China’s ByteDance, and the first quarter set a new record for global venture funding, with $125bn raised around the world, according to data from Crunchbase. 

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. Deliveroo orders double under lockdown
Deliveroo said its order volumes more than doubled to 71m in the first quarter of 2021, with customer numbers also increasing sharply, as chief executive Will Shu admitted he had “a lot of work ahead” to win over investors after the UK food delivery service’s disastrous initial public offering.

2. TSMC ups sales forecast amid chip shortages
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, expects 20 per cent revenue growth this year, up from a mid-teens forecast in January, as it continues to try to meet demand caused by a worldwide shortage of semiconductors.

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3. Dell boosted by VMware dividend
Dell shares are touching $100 today, up 8 per cent, after the US computer maker said it would receive a cash dividend of nearly $10bn in connection with the spin-off of its stake in VMware, easing pressure on its balance sheet.

4. Darktrace Lynch mystery
Darktrace has issued contradictory information about the role of British tech billionaire Mike Lynch, who has been charged with fraud in the US, complicating the cyber security company’s efforts to distance itself from the Autonomy founder ahead of its potential £3bn float. In 2018, Darktrace told the FT that Lynch had left its advisory council the previous year. But the company’s stock market registration document published this week says he remained on the body until March 2021.

5. How Jack Ma fell foul of Xi Jinping 
China’s most outspoken billionaire has gone silent. Since Chinese president Xi Jinping unexpectedly called off the blockbuster public offering of Ant Group, Jack Ma’s payments and lending business, five months ago, the Alibaba founder has made a single public appearance. Here’s our FT Magazine piece on how he fell from grace.

Sifted — the week in European start-ups

Sustainability is the latest buzzword among European start-ups. Venture capitalists are increasingly interested in measuring the ‘impact’ of their investments, while companies are ever more keen to show how ‘green’ they are to win over customers. This week, an €87m climate tech venture capital fund closed, a new ethical investment app launched and Sifted took a look at what, exactly, a head of sustainability does. 

Also this week, Sifted examined which fintech businesses might soon reach a $1bn valuation and columnist Nicolas Colin argued that if the Greensill debacle and Deliveroo’s recent doldrums teach the start-up community anything, perhaps it’s that they need to learn how to lobby.

Tech tools — Musion’s holographic pizza

Even going out on my first real-world assignment in more than a year today, there was still a virtual, remote element to the venue I visited on London’s South Bank. Virgin Media had connected their gigabit broadband service to a temporary pizza restaurant by the Thames, fitted out with equipment to create a hologram dining experience shared with a twin restaurant in Edinburgh. On the other side of the table to me in Scotland was the very realistic and contoured figure of Ian O’Connell, a director at the 3D holographic tech company Musion.

Its tech deployed an array of professional cameras and lighting to create life-size 4K holograms of the two of us against Vantablack panelled walls rather than conventional green screens. While this would have been a boon during lockdown, bringing loved ones closer together in hospitals and care homes, Ian told me the pandemic has helped to hasten development and such rooms could move beyond the trial stage to be appearing in businesses in 18 months’ time.

A pilot project for PwC has been created in Cyprus with the equipment costing around £140,000, but substituting TV broadcast standard cameras with cheaper ones could reduce the price considerably. The Two Hearts Pizzeria is connecting more than 30 loved ones in London and Edinburgh today and Friday. The rest of us will have to wait a little longer for the mystic pizza 3D-meeting experience.