Image: Wish

Image: Wish

TECHNOLOGY

Wish Looks Toward IPO in Confidential Filing

The e-commerce marketplace Wish announced Monday that it had submitted a confidential draft registration statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering of its Class A common stock. Founded in 2010 by University of Waterloo classmates Peter Szulczewski, a former Google engineer who now serves as Wish’s chief executive officer, and Danny Zhang, who formerly worked for Yahoo!, the San Francisco–headquartered online marketplace was last valued at $11.2 billion in August 2019.

“Wish has succeeded by creating an entertainment experience that captures the way consumers browse and discover products on mobile devices,” Szulczewski said in a 2019 statement.

Wish’s group of investors includes General Atlantic, Founders Fund, Formation 8, Temasek Holdings, Fidelity Investments, GGV Capital, DST and Wellington Management.

According to a 2019 Wish press release, the e-commerce company boasts more than 80 million active users with 1 million registered merchants. Through its shopping platform, Wish sells 3 million products per day in an online environment that is focused on bringing an array of goods such as apparel, accessories, housewares and electronics to consumers at low prices. Relying on its technology, which incorporates big-data concepts and machine learning, Wish seeks to create a more personalized experience for online shoppers from around the globe and every economic background.