Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch signals IPO readiness as AI agents fuel revenue surge

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TechCrunch Desktop Logo TechCrunch Mobile Logo LatestStartupsVentureAppleSecurityAIApps EventsPodcastsNewsletters SearchSubmit Site Search Toggle Mega Menu Toggle Topics Latest Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch signals IPO readiness as AI agents fuel revenue surge Marina Temkin 8:22 AM PDT · April 13, 2026 While many startups founded prior to the emergence of ChatGPT are struggling to position themselves for the AI era, Vercel, a 10-year-old dev tool and website hosting platform, is benefiting from the explosion of AI-generated apps and agents. “When I started this company, only tens of millions of people could deploy,” Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch told the audience at the HumanX conference in San Francisco last week. “Now we’re seeing that everybody in the world can create an app.” The explosion in app creation by non-developers has been a significant boon to Vercel’s business. The company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) has skyrocketed from $100 million at the beginning of 2024, as reported by The Information, to a run rate of $340 million by the end of February 2026, according to Forbes. Given that growth, Rauch was asked onstage about his IPO plans. He suggested the company is already operating with the discipline of a public entity. “Vercel is very much a working public company,” Rauch said. As for when the debut will happen, he replied: “There’s no perfect timeline or quarter I can give. The company’s ready and getting more ready for it every day.” 2026 was expected to be a strong year for new listings, but a sharp sell-off in software, fueled by the fear of AI disruption, has effectively frozen the IPO pipeline. Aside from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, most talk of public debuts has largely ceased. Once any of those company’s go public, all expected to be blockbuster hits, the window may open again. Techcrunch event Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW Meanwhile most tech CEOs have gone quiet about their IPO plans. But Rauch is telegraphing the company’s public market readiness, suggesting that Vercel is eyeing a listing in the not-too-distant future. When pressed about what Wall Street should know about Vercel, Rauch responded: “The total addressable market of infrastructure has now grown, and it simply has no ceiling.” Vercel is betting that as more apps are created by AI agents instead of humans, the company will become the primary platform for hosting everything agents develop. “Agents are very prolific at deploying,” Rauch said, adding that 30% of the apps running on the company’s platform already came from agents. According to Rauch, agents will accelerate software production by making it easier to generate custom solutions than to purchase existing software. “All of that software… it needs to go somewhere, and we think it’s going to be Vercel,” he said. Vercel was last valued at $9.3 billion when it raised a $300 million Series F led by Accel in September. The company competes with Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services for hosting services, and it also offers v0, a vibe coding tool for creating websites and apps.   Marina Temkin Reporter, Venture Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation. You can contact or verify outreach from Marina by emailing marina.temkin@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 347-683-3909 on Signal. April 30 San Francisco, CA StrictlyVC kicks off the year in SF. Get in the room for unfiltered fireside chats with industry leaders, insider VC insights, and high-value connections that actually move the needle. Tickets are limited. 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