News & Analysis

Developer collaboration platform GitLab has raised its IPO price range to $66 to $69 per share, up from $55 to $60. The company would be valued at nearly $10 billion at the top end of the range, well above the $7.5 billion Microsoft paid in 2018 for its main competitor, GitHub.

GitLab, which began as an open-source project in Ukraine in 2011, was incorporated as a company in 2014. After the startup went through Y Combinator's accelerator in 2015, Khosla Ventures—now GitLab's largest shareholder, aside from its CEO—led the company’s $1.5 million seed round and $4 million Series A later that year. Since then, Gitlab has raised a handful of funding rounds, including a $268 million Series E in 2019 that valued the company at $2.8 billion, according to PitchBook data. Gitlab reportedly reached a $6 billion valuation in January.

The IPO filing shows rapid revenue growth. For fiscal 2021, GitLab reported sales of $152 million, a year-over-year increase of 87%. For the six months ended July 31, revenue grew 69% over the same period last year. And the company shows an annualized revenue rate shooting up to $233 million, based on Q2 2021 sales figures.

But GitLab is nowhere near a breakeven point, as its costs still far exceed its revenue. Though while the company's operating expenses have been growing on an absolute basis, they have decreased as a percentage of revenue from 184% in the first half of 2020 to 139% in the first half of 2021.

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