Kleiner Perkins-backed Ambiq pops with IPO debut

Ambiq Micro, a 15-year-old manufacturer of energy-efficient chips for wearables and medical devices, closed its first day of trading at $38.53 per share on Wednesday, up 61% from the $24 IPO price it set the day before.

The success of IPOs shows strong investors’ demand in the public market for new small businesses that benefit from AI innovation.

Ambiq closed its first day as a public company with a $656 million valuation (excluding employee options). This is a significant increase from the last private funding valuation of $450 million in 2023, according to Pitchbook.

Ambiq believes it is well located to exploit the growth driven by AI. “We have very low energy so we can have more intelligence and more AI,” company CTO Scott Hanson told TechCrunch.

For the three months ended March 31st, Ambiq recorded a net loss of $8.3 million against $15.7 million in revenue. S1 Filing Show. The first quarter results show slight improvements over the first quarter of 2024. This is the company reported a loss of $9.8 million on revenue of $15.2 million.

According to the filing, Singapore’s state advocacy groups Kleiner Perkins and EDB Investments are AMBIQ’s biggest external advocates.

Wen Hsieh, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins until 2023, first supported AMBIQ when the company raised the Series C in 2014. Matter Venture Partners2 years ago.