Early investors in robo-advisor Wealthfront have walked a long road, but all indications point to a liquidity event coming sooner rather than later for those private equity, venture capital and individual financiers.
Roughly three years after an unsuccessful effort to sell itself to multinational bank UBS, Wealthfront signaled to the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that it is readying to go public, filing a confidential Form S-1 for an initial public stock offering.
‘They’ve been looking for an exit,’ said David Goldstone, manager of investment research at Condor Capital and co-author of The Robo Report. ‘Initial investors put money into Wealthfront more than 15 years ago at this point … They’re at the size now that they can go public (according to them, we’ll see). It’ll be interesting to see their financials once they come out, but they’ve been profitable for some time. It makes sense to me that they’re now looking to go public.’