Skydio Stock: Prepare to Invest in the IPO

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Learn how to invest in Skydio stock when the IPO arrives. Get access to select IPOs withTradeStationand other online brokers thatoffer free IPO investingto eligible customers.Or browse pre-IPO investing platforms for early equity opportunities.

Skydio Stock IPO News

08/10/2023: Skydio closing consumer drone business
02/27/2023: Skydio Raises $230 million Series E
02/08/2022: Skydio Wins Production OT Agreement for U.S. Army Short Range Reconnaissance Program
03/01/2021: Skydio Announces $170 Million In Series D Funding Led by Andreessen Horowitz
07/13/2020: U.S. Autonomous Drone Maker Skydio Raises $100 Million

What is Skydio?

Skydio is a premium drone manufacture with a mission to:

…make the world more productive, creative, and safe with autonomous flight.

The company uses autonomous aircraft vehicles to empower creators, governments, and engineers to produce high-quality videos and 3D scanning for endless applicability.

All design, software development, and drone manufacturing are done in the United States, securing the supply chain and making the company a reliable partner of the U.S. government.

The company was founded in 2014 by two colleagues who met five years earlier at MIT. The company’s headquarters are in Redwood City, California. Another drone startup, Zipline, was founded the same year, but is focused on delivery applications.

Here’s an example of the Skydio 2 drone and its beacon functionality that enables autonomous maneuvering and filming.

Check out what this thing can do! Extraordinary.

Is Skydio Stock Publicly Traded?

No, Skydio is still privately owned.

The shareholders include founders, early investors (venture capital firms, celebrities), and employees.

Skydio has raised more than $562 million since its seed round in 2015. The most recent raise was a Series E for $230 million in February 2023, valuing the company at more than $2.2 billion.

Prominent venture capital investors include Andreesen Horowitz, who provided seed funding and led multiple later rounds. Other investors include Next47, NVIDIA, UP.Partners, Linse Capital, Playground Global, Hercules Capital, Axon, Levitate Capital, and the Walton Family Foundation.

When is the Skydio IPO Date?

The Skydio IPO date is currently unknown.

As of February 2023, the company is still in startup mode. It raised $230 million in a Series E, providing capital for the next stage of growth.

Considering the number of investors involved and its fast growth, an IPO is likely in the coming years.Investors will be looking for an exit.

We won’t get a better sense of when the Skydio IPO date is until the following things happen:

The company announces another funding round
Skydio selects a lead underwriter or banking partner for the IPO
New information about the Skydio IPO date leaks to the financial press
Skydio announces (or leaks) that it filed an S-1 confidentially with the SEC
The SEC releases a publicly available Skydio S-1 filing
Announcement (or press leak) of a forthcoming SPAC merger

All of these milestones and announcements will serve as supporting evidence of progress toward a forthcoming public offering.

Even when the company and SEC publicly release the S-1 filing, we still won’t know a firm date. However, the IPO date typically occurs a month or two after the S-1 is released to the public.

Bookmark this page for the latest Skydio stock and IPO news.

What is the Skydio Stock Price?

Since Skydio is not publicly traded on a stock exchange, there is no Skydio stock price yet.

What is the Skydio Stock Symbol? Skydio Ticker?

Skydio has not yet submitted public filings to the SEC. Therefore, it is not yet known what the Skydio stock symbol will be. We can only speculate.

Here are a few possibilities that appear to be available in the U.S.:

SKYD
SDIO

Will Skydio Stock be a Motley Fool Stock Advisor Recommendation?

We won’t know until after the IPO if Skydio will be a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. However, Skydio fits the mold of high-growth, disruptive business models that the Fool typically recommends.

Skydio will undoubtedly be on their radar once it goes public.

Fool newsletter subscribers are notoriously long-term-minded and rarely sell, meaning the right stocks will continue to rise over several years.

Skydio may also receive a recommendation by the Motley Fool Rule Breakers (Rule Breakers review) newsletter or other premium services. Both services have handily beaten the broader market since the early 2000s.

Read this Motley Fool Stock Advisor review to learn about the stock selection methodology and about how you can participate in excellent returns.

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Will There be a Skydio SPAC Acquisition?

A SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank check company. They are shell companies designed to help established businesses go public without a traditional IPO.

The SPAC company merges with the established company and takes on the established company’s name. It’s also known as a reverse merger.

So many SPACs have gone public in the past 12 months that it’s likely Skydio receives pitches each week.

This could put Skydio in a strong position to go public via a SPAC. However, there are no indications from the founders or investors they are interested in a Skydio SPAC.

Also, prominent venture capital firms such as Andreesen Horowitz tend to prefer the traditional IPO route for their investments.

Using a SPAC to go public allows the company to skip the complicated and expensive IPO process.

Not all companies are ready to IPO, making SPACs an attractive alternative to an IPO where the company can still raise new funds.

However, the more established a company is, the more resources it can hire to facilitate the traditional IPO process.

When early investors and employees need liquidity, and the company generates more significant revenue, the company will decide on the best way to go public — a traditional IPO, direct IPO, or SPAC merger.

Can you Invest in Skydio Stock? Four Potential Ways

Generally, it’s challenging to acquire shares of high-demand IPOs. Most investors will need to settle for buying the stock after it begins trading.

IPO underwriters typically give their best customers access first, then allocate shares to certain institutions and brokers often tied by professional relationships.

When the largest brokers receive IPO shares, they divvy them up amongst their eligible customers, prioritizing their most valued customers first (wealthiest).

For high-demand deals, most investors will not get shares.

A few brokers have partnered with the IPO investing app ClickIPO to give access to individual investors.

Investors are encouraged not to flip shares (sell them immediately after the IPO).

Though ClickIPO has not demonstrated the ability to allocate app users with high-demand IPO shares, they’ve executed more than 200 IPOs and secondary offerings on its platform.

For individual investors without a high net worth, ClickIPO and its partner broker TradeStation is the most likely chance of participating in IPOs.

Robinhood is also now offering limited IPO access to specific deals, as is SoFi.

With that, here are four potential ways to own Skydio Stock:

Buy Skydio stock after it begins trading
Buy Skydio stock in the Skydio IPO through a broker
Acquire shares through a directed share program during the IPO
Attempt to acquire Skydio stock in pre-IPO secondary marketplaces before the IPO

1. Buy Skydio stock after the Skydio IPO

Since acquiring IPO shares is challenging for individual investors, the easiest way to own Skydio stock is to wait for the IPO to complete.

Realistically, unless your brokerage account is worth more than $1 million and your broker regularly receives IPO allocations, you are unlikely to get in on high-demand IPOs.

In some cases, patient investors can buy the stock at or below the IPO price. This is not always true.

Uber, which many predicted to rise steeply, actually fell on the IPO date.

Spending significant effort to acquire IPO shares may not be worth it in the end. You may also spend time and effort to obtain shares but only receive a small allocation, limiting upside gain.

Though IPOs can provide one-day gains north of 20%, even up to 100% in rare cases (such as Airbnb and Doordash), the most significant gains will come during the decade following the IPO if the company is genuinely disruptive.

Take, for example, Netflix, Amazon, or Tesla. You could have bought the stock years after the IPO and still experienced gains of more than 1,000%

If you’re an investor that wants to buy Skydio stock for the long-term, consider opening a position after the IPO and averaging down if the stock falls.

Short-term traders may angle to acquire IPO shares and hope for a short-term pop.

2. Buy Skydio stock during the Skydio IPO through a broker

Ambitious investors can position themselves to invest in the Skydio IPO once it arrives.

Your chances of getting IPO shares depends on four factors:

IPO demand
Your broker and eligibility
Your assets under management (AUM) at the broker
Propensity to flip shares

As IPO demand increases, the chances of receiving IPO shares decreases. Therefore, the IPOs that are most interesting to the masses are the hardest to access.

Most online brokers do not offer IPO shares. Check directly to see if yours does, or look at our list of best brokers for IPO investing.

Legacy brokers, such as Fidelity and Charles Schwab, have minimum eligibility requirements and penalties for flipping shares (selling shortly after the IPO).

But even if eligible, the brokers must sub-allocate whatever limited shares they receive from the IPO underwriters.

This process is non-transparent, but priority is likely given to the wealthiest investors first.

For example, if your account balance is $500,000, and that makes you eligible according to terms, the broker may only have enough IPO shares to distribute to customers with assets of $3,000,000 or more.

This brings us to ClickIPO.

ClickIPO is a smartphone app that partners with TradeStation to deliver IPO access to ordinary investors.

There is no minimum account value required.

ClickIPO prioritizes IPO share distribution to investors who are less likely to flip shares and thus considered more desirable IPO beneficiaries (in theory).

Therefore, ClickIPO offers a value proposition to underwriters and newly public companies.

Though quick profits from IPOs is one way the large underwriter reward whale-sized clients.

Joining a broker that offers access to IPOs does not guarantee a share allocation, especially in high-demand IPOs. You are probably better off waiting for the company to start trading after the IPO.

3. Potential Directed Share Program

Another possibility is a directed share program.

Sometimes when companies file their S-1 SEC filing (to begin the IPO process), they include a directed share program for executives, affiliates, and other people who helped the company grow.

Since Skydio’s success is due, in part, to its customer base, it’s possible the company may offer IPO shares to frequent customers or its email list.

This has happened before.

Uber offered shares to drivers that completed a certain number of trips.

GoPro offered shares to its email list.

Airbnb offered IPO shares to hosts.

Considering Skydio’s growing customer base, pay attention to the S-1 filing for a directed share program.

Bookmark this page for more information as the IPO approaches.

4. Attempt to acquire shares in pre-IPO secondary marketplaces

Founders, early employees, and investors often find themselves in a difficult predicament. They own valuable shares of a company that doesn’t trade publicly.

These shareholders might have multi-million dollar net worth’s because of their stock holdings, but the stock is not liquid because it doesn’t trade on an exchange.

A few platforms have evolved to gives these individuals a way to liquidate their holding before the IPO.

Some of the more prominent sites include Linqto,EquityZen, and Forge.

Both sites bring liquidity to an otherwise illiquid asset. Accredited investors (those with invested assets > $1,000,000) may join these sites and attempt to buy these companies’ shares when they become available.

The shares are only offered to accredited investors because the company’s financials are not publicly filed with regulators yet, increasing the investors’ risk.

For high-profile companies, demand is high, lowering your chances of acquiring shares. The author considers this a low-likelihood way to acquire shares. However, some readers have written with success stories buying shares this way.

Where can I find the Skydio S-1 Filing?

The Skydio S-1 filing won’t be publicly available until released. Once it is public, we’ll post it here.

You can find a real-time SEC feed of the latest IPO filings from other companies on the recent S-1 filings page.

Best Brokers to Buy Skydio Stock

What is the best online brokerage for buying Skydio stock when it begins trading?

If you want to attempt to participate in IPOs, TradeStation is the best low-minimum investment IPO broker for investors with assets under $100,000.

See the complete list of best brokers for IPO investing here.

* Disclosure: The web page contains affiliate links from our partners. If a reader opens an account or buys a service from a link in this article, we may be compensated at no additional cost to the reader. Opening an account with a broker that provides access to IPOs does not guarantee the customer allocations of specific IPOs. The author is long TSLA, ABNB, CMG, BYND.

Risk Statement: Investing in IPOs and pre-IPO startups involves significant risk. Do not invest in companies based solely on what is included in this article. Only invest in IPOs and pre-IPO companies with money you can afford to lose.

Skydio Stock: Prepare to Invest in the IPO - Access IPOs (2024)