Data Science Firm Neo4j Reportedly Prepping IPO

Neo4j, a supplier of graph database and data science tools, reportedly plans to go public.

As Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Nov. 19), the company is taking a page from its customer Klarna and aiming for an initial public offering (IPO).

Klarna’s IPO, expected to happen in the first half of 2025, is set to become one of the largest public listings of next year. As Bloomberg noted, the IPO is being closely watched by other tech companies after years of tepid IPO demand.

“Everyone is looking for these early kind of frontrunners in opening up the tech IPO window,” Neo4j CEO Emil Eifrem told Bloomberg. “I’m focused on making sure that we’re IPO-able, that we have the ability to go public when the time is right.”

Neo4j, like Klarna, was founded in Sweden, but moved to Silicon Valley in 2011. According to Bloomberg, the company has recently raised $50 million, valuing it at just north of $2 billion. Aside from Klarna, its customers include several other major banks.

Eifrem said Neo4j has $200 million dollar annual recurring revenue and expects to be cash flow positive next year. The company hasn’t selected banks or formally settled on where the IPO would occur, though the U.S. would be a “logical” choice, Eifrem said.

American exchanges offer “more analyst coverage and better liquidity,” compared with London, Amsterdam and Stockholm, he told Bloomberg.

Klarna, best known for its buy now, pay later (BNPL) products, announced last week that it confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for an IPO to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The company has not specified a date for its IPO, saying in its filing that the “initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.”

Meanwhile, not every FinTech company is ready to take a page from Klarna. As noted here Tuesday, attendees at a recent tech conference said they were more focused on growing their businesses, seeing an IPO as part of a larger journey. Among them is Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of online payments startup GoCardless.

“The markets have been challenging over the last few years,” Takeuchi said, per a CNBC report. He said his firm is focused on building a better business, and “the rest will follow” if the company achieves that goal.