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ServiceTitan shares popped 42% in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday after the provider of cloud software to contractors raised around $625 million in its initial public offering.

The company, trading under ticker symbol TTAN, sold shares at $71 apiece on Wednesday, above the expected range. The stock opened at $101. Based on its IPO price, the company’s market cap was about $6.3 billion.

ServiceTitan’s IPO is notable because few tech companies have taken the leap into the public market since late 2021, when rising interest rates and soaring inflation pushed investors out of risky assets. ServiceTitan is the first significant venture-backed tech company to go public since Rubrik’s debut in April. A month before that, Reddit started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Other companies have suggested an IPO could be coming soon. Chipmaker Cerebras filed to go public in September, but the process was slowed down due to a review by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS. Last month, online lender Klarna said it had confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

While late-stage startups have been reluctant to take the public market leap, investors are showing a growing appetite for tech.

“The reception is great. The water feels wonderful,” Vahe Kuzoyan, ServiceTitan’s president, told CNBC in an interview. Nina Achadjian, a partner at Index Ventures and ServiceTitan board member, said she’s gotten many text messages from other venture capitalists saying the outcome opens up the window for more IPOs.

On Wednesday, the Nasdaq Composite index closed above 20,000 for the first time. Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta all closed at records, with Apple just below its all-time high.

ServiceTitan agreed to “compounding ratchet” terms as part of a 2022 funding round that valued the company at $7.6 billion, according to its prospectus. The decision “has put ServiceTitan on the clock to go public ASAP to minimize dilution impact,” investors at venture firm Meritech Capital wrote in a blog post.

But Ara Mahdessian, ServiceTitan’s CEO, said Thursday that the terms didn’t influence the decision to go public now.

“Anti-dilution terms are not uncommon in financings,” he said.

Kuzoyan and Mahdessian created ServiceTitan in 2007. Before starting the company, Mahdessian said, his father was a jack of all trades, and Kuzoyan’s father ran a plumbing business. On Wednesday, the founders’ parents rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq in New York.

ServiceTitan targets businesses in plumbing, landscaping, electrical and other trades, with software for managing sales leads, recording calls, generating quotes and scheduling jobs. As of Jan. 31, it had about 8,000 customers with more than $10,000 in annualized billings.

The company’s preliminary results for the October quarter show a net loss of about $47 million on $198.5 million in revenue. That suggests approximately 24% year-over-year revenue growth, the highest rate since mid-2023. But the company’s net loss widened from around $40 million in the October quarter last year.

“Our read is certainly that investors really value durable growth,” Mahdessian said. “They value being cash-flow positive, which thankfully, we have been for the past several quarters.”

Bessemer Venture Partners, TPG and Iconiq Growth are among the company’s top shareholders, alongside Kuzoyan and Mahdessian.

At its IPO price, ServiceTitan was valued at just over 9 times trailing 12 months revenue. The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, a basket of more than 60 publicly traded cloud stocks, currently trades at about 6.4 times revenue.

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to ‘one-up’ deal

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to 'one-up' deal

An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Air taxi maker Joby Aviation in a new lawsuit accused competitor Archer Aviation of using stolen information by a former employee to “one-up” a partnership deal with a real estate developer.

“This is corporate espionage, planned and premeditated,” Joby said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California Superior Court in Santa Cruz, where the company is based.

Archer and Joby did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The lawsuit alleges that former U.S. state and local policy lead, George Kivork, downloaded dozens of files and sent some content to his personal email two days before he resigned in July to take a job at Archer, which had recruited him.

By August, Joby said a partner that worked with Kivork said it had been approached by Archer with a “more lucrative deal.” Joby alleges that the eVTOL rival’s understanding of “highly confidential” details helped it leverage negotiations.

Joby also said the developer attempted to terminate the agreement, citing a breach of confidentiality.

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Kivork refused to return the files when Joby approached him after conducting an investigation, according to the suit. The company also said Archer denied wrongdoing, and would not disclose how it learned about the terms of the agreement or provide results from an internal investigation it allegedly undertook.

The lawsuit comes during a busy period for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology as companies race to gain Federal Aviation Administration certification to start flying commercially. ‘

The sector has also benefitted from President Donald Trump‘s newly minted eVTOL pilot program.

Joby argued in the complaint that it’s “imperative” to protect Joby’s work “from this type of espionage” to promote the sector’s success and ensure fair competition.

Last week, Joby said it completed its first test flight for a hybrid aircraft it’s working on with defense contractor L3Harris. This month, Amazon-backed Beta Technologies, another electric flight company, also went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Joby shares have more than doubled over the last year, while Archer is up about 68%.

In August 2023, Archer settled a previous legal dispute with Boeing-owned Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets. As part of the deal, Archer agreed to use Wisk as its autonomous tech partner.

A hearing is scheduled for March 20, 2026.

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Joby and Archer year-to-date stock chart.

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

Andriy Onufriyenko | Moment | Getty Images

Bitcoin dropped on Thursday to levels not seen in more than six months, as investors appeared to pull back exposure to riskier assets and weighed the prospects of another Federal Reserve rate cut next month.

The flagship digital currency fell to as low as $86,325.81, its lowest level since April 21. It last traded at $86,690.11.

The release of stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs data raised questions about whether the central bank would lower its benchmark overnight rate. The U.S. economy added 119,000 in September, well above the 50,000 economists polled by Dow Jones expected.

That report sent the probability of a December rate cut to around 40%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Bitcoin’s pullback formed part of a broader cryptocurrency market decline. XRP was last down 2.3% on the day, and is below $2.00, while ether shed more than 3% to trade well below $3,000. Dogecoin was unchanged.

The world’s oldest crypto also led stocks lower, even after a blockbuster Nvidia earnings report. Traders who are heavily invested in AI-related stocks tend to also hold bitcoin, linking the two trades.

Bitcoin’s price has largely slid since a rash of cascading liquidations of highly leveraged crypto positions in early October.

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