£3bn UK listing for cyber group
CYBER security firm Darktrace has shrugged off Deliveroo’s recent stock market flop by pressing ahead with its own listing.
The planned flotation on the London Stock Exchange could value Cambridgebased Darktrace at £3billion.
The company, founded in 2013, is a world leader in selflearning artificial intelligence.
Chief executive Poppy Gustafsson said: “Our intention to list on the London Stock Exchange marks a major milestone in Darktrace’s history of rapid growth and a historic day for the UK’s thriving technology sector.”
It is also a big test of investor appetite since Deliveroo’s disastrous stock market debut, when shares in the takeaway app plunged. Its share price remains at around 250p, well down on the 390p it listed at late last month.
Darktrace now countries and has employees.
It bills itself as a world leader in helping firms tackle a “new era of cyber threat”, including from online crooks and other countries.
Among the successes it quotes is stopoperates in 100 more than 1,500 ping the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, which hit the NHS.
Darktrace got early backing from tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch’s venture capital firm Invoke.
Lynch is fighting extradition to the US over fraud charges relating to Hewlett-Packard’s 2011 big-bucks takeover of software company Autonomy, which he founded.
He denies any wrongdoing. Gustafsson insisted Lynch’s legal fight would have “no impact on the performance of the business”, and called him a “visionary technologist”.
She also claimed Darktrace was a “very different company” to Deliveroo, saying: “I think the difference here is that Darktrace is a fundamental technology company.”
The listing is designed to turbocharge product development and bolster the company’s balance sheet.
Its current base of 4,700 customers is a fraction of the 150,000 it believes it can target.
New board members include former BT boss Peter Bonfield and Conservative peer DavidWilletts.