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The $2.8 billion startup that teaches programmers how to be more like Google just filed for an IPO

Pivotal began as an EMC spinoff.

  • Pivotal, last valued at $2.8 billion, has filed to go public.
  • Dell is the single largest shareholder in Pivotal and will retain a controlling stake after the initial public offering.
  • The numbers show that Pivotal is not profitable, but that losses are narrowing and its revenue is up 22% year-over-year.
  • Pivotal began life as a small software consultancy that worked with companies like Google and Twitter in their earliest days. EMC bought Pivotal in 2012 and then spun it back out in 2013.

Pivotal, the $2.8 billion software company that began as a spinoff from EMC and VMware, filed for an IPO on Friday, adding to a growing list of tech companies seeking to make a Wall Street debut this year.

Pivotal, which sells cloud computing services to large corporations, generated about $500 million in revenue last year but has lost money every year since it was formed, according to its S-1 filing with the SEC.

While Pivotal did not specify how many shares it plans to sell in the offering, it stated that Dell will continue to have a controlling stake after the IPO.

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Pivotal makes its business in providing cloud computing software to large businesses, as well as consulting services. Its general mission is to help even the largest companies build the technology, and the engineering culture, to be able to compete with the major tech companies.

It had raised $1.7 billion in venture capital funding since it spun out in 2013. When Dell and EMC merged in 2016, Dell became a majority shareholder in Pivotal. Other investors include Ford and Microsoft.

The filing comes on the same day that Dropbox made its debut on the public markets — popping as much as 50% in the first day of trading. Several other private tech companies, particularly companies focused on enterprise technology such as DocuSign and Zuora, have filed paperwork for IPOs.

Some industry insiders expect as many as 50 tech companies to go public this year, following several years of fewer than normal listings by historical standards.

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Pivotal's filing shows that it is still not profitable — it lost $163 million last fiscal year, compared to a $232 million net loss in the year before. Pivotal also posted annual revenue of $509.4 million in that same period, which was up 22% from the year-ago period. Furthermore, it's showing gross margins of 55% for the fiscal year, up from 44% a year ago.

The company did not say which exchange it planned to list on and did not provide a ticker symbol. Pivotal says it plans to raise $100 million in the IPO, but that's often a placeholder until a final number can be calculated closer to the actual date it lists.

Pivotal has had a somewhat unusual road to this IPO: It was originally founded by Rob Mee in 1989 as a small software consultancy, which eventually grew until it was taking on clients like Google and Twitter in their earliest days.

In 2012, EMC bought Pivotal in an all-cash deal — only to spin it back out again as a new company, called Pivotal Software, with

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