General Catalyst Reportedly Weighing Initial Public Offering

Is venture capital (VC) firm General Catalyst on its way to becoming a public company?

The investment group is in the “very early stages” of considering an initial public offering (IPO), Axios reported Friday (Feb. 28), citing multiple sources.

If the plans proceed, the report notes, General Catalyst would become the first American VC firm to go public, almost 20 years after private equity firm Blackstone took the same path.

According to the report, sources say the firm has no timeline for an IPO, nor has it lined up bankers to help it proceed. Rather, General Catalyst is in expansion mode.

In January, the firm launched a partnership with Amazon Web Services centered around artificial intelligence (AI)-focused healthcare, combining AWS’s tech expertise with General Catalyst’s track record of healthcare investments.

The companies said their collaboration will focus on building and deploying AI-powered solutions to address critical needs in areas such as predictive and personalized care, diagnostics and patient engagement.

Last year saw the news that General Catalyst — whose past investments include Stripe, Snap and Mistral — had raised almost $6 billion for technology startups.

The Axios report argues that while initial public offerings by VC portfolio companies are rare these days, VC itself could perhaps fill the void. The report further contends that while General Catalyst is primarily seen as a VC firm, that doesn’t mean it will always stay that way.

For example, the report said, firms like Blackstone and Apollo began as leveraged buyout operations, but later shifted their focus to real estate, private credit and insurance.

As PYMNTS has reported, this year could see a number of high profile IPOs from companies including  payments/buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Klarna, artificial intelligence (AI) cloud company CoreWeave and FinTech Chime.

Other companies preparing to go public include England’s Monument Bank and Bolt, the Estonia-based ride hailing company that is one of Uber’s chief European rivals.

“Momentum may be on the side of FinTechs in the current year,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “First there’s the momentum of the overall markets, which may be readying for the incoming presidential administration, which some investors and executives expect to be arguably ‘business friendly’ in terms of regulations, crypto and taxes.”