Virtualized storage business Tintri files for $100M IPO
Friday, June 2 Reuters : BRIEF-Tintri Inc files for IPO of up to $100 million
Context & Ripple Effects
Tintri's filing caps a two-year arc: the hybrid-storage startup pulled in a $125M private round in August 2015, months before Nutanix's $200M IPO filing opened the hyperconverged window, and Talend's $86M filing kept the enterprise-infrastructure lane active through mid-2016.
Filing for up to $100M puts Tintri on the same path as those peers — converting venture backing into public currency while the window for storage listings is open, with Nutanix already serving as the sector's listed benchmark.
First-order effects
- Tintri takes on public-company disclosure obligations and hands its bankers the job of price discovery for a company whose last known raise was $125M against a reported $800M private valuation.
- Investors get their first tradable pure-play on Tintri's VM-aware storage stack, sized small enough at $100M that demand for the deal will be read closely.
Second-order effects
- Nutanix, already public via its own filing, becomes the comparable investors price Tintri against — soft demand for Tintri's deal would compress how the market values the whole virtualized-storage cohort.
- Other storage startups sitting on 2015-vintage funding watch Tintri's book-building as a live test of whether the IPO window is still open before committing to their own filings.
Third-order effects
- If public buyers discount hardware-tied storage vendors relative to their private marks, the sector consolidates around the few listed players instead of minting new ones, narrowing exits for the 2015 funding class.
- A weak debut would push late-stage infrastructure companies toward sales or down rounds rather than IPOs, shifting power from founders chasing public currency to acquirers picking over discounted assets.
The trend: Enterprise storage startups that raised large private rounds in 2015 are rushing to list while the public-market window stays open, with Nutanix's trajectory setting the valuation template they will be judged against.