Sources: Slack is expected to be valued at $16B-$17B when it lists its shares publicly next week, up from the $7.1B in its last funding round in August 2018
- Valuation as public company could be double last funding round — Workplace chat company plans unusual direct listing next week
Context & Ripple Effects
Slack's path to the public markets has been telegraphed for a year: funding talks at $2B-plus back in 2015, an August 2018 round at $7.1B, then active IPO preparation targeting the first half of 2019. The decisive turn came in January when sources said Slack would skip the traditional roadshow and go out via a direct listing, and by April private-market trades were already pricing the company near $16B.
Today's report confirms that gap between the last private round and the public debut has held: bankers and investors now expect $16B-$17B when shares begin trading next week — more than double the August 2018 mark, with no new capital raised along the way.
First-order effects
- Existing shareholders — employees and early backers — gain immediate liquidity without a lockup, the core promise of the direct-listing structure Slack chose over a conventional IPO.
- Goldman Sachs, hired to lead the process, collects advisory fees rather than underwriting spreads, since the company raises no money in the listing itself.
Second-order effects
- The $16B-$17B expectation landing close to what private-market buyers already paid suggests the private-public valuation gap is compressing, weakening the argument for traditional IPO discounts.
- Rivals in workplace chat — Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and Facebook's Workplace, which is pushing into enterprise services and calendar integrations — now face a publicly traded competitor whose market cap becomes a recruiting and M&A currency.
Third-order effects
- If Slack's listing prices cleanly without underwriters setting the float, expect more late-stage unicorns to treat direct listings as a default exit route rather than an experiment, reshaping how investment banks monetize debut mandates.
- A successful debut also pressures boards of other high-burn software companies to list while private marks are still rising, before the gap between paper and public valuations forces down rounds.
The trend: Late-stage tech companies are increasingly bypassing the traditional IPO in favor of direct listings, letting private valuations carry straight into the public market.