Colorado has a new public company — Gloo Holdings, a Boulder-based software provider that works with faith-based organizations and nonprofits.
Gloo sold 9.1 million shares at $8 a piece in its initial public offering, below the range of $10 to $12 it had marketed. But the price was high enough to allow the company to raise $72.8 million and generate an overall market value on the company of $582.2 million.
When shares started trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker GLOO, they held at the $8 mark and closed the day at $8.10. On Friday, shares opened at $9 before dropping into the mid-$8 range.
The company, which raised $110 million from private investors last year, was founded in 2013 by Scott and Theresa Beck, who crafted the name as a play off the word glue. Earlier this year, the company hired Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel, as its head of technology and executive chairman.
Scott Beck is the company’s CEO. He was chief operating officer at Blockbuster during its expansion phase and the former CEO of Boston Market in the 1990s, where he played a key role in launching Einstein Bros. Bagels, which became one of the country’s largest bagel chains.
Gloo, which counts more than 140,000 users, runs a platform that connects Christian churches, faith-based organizations and nonprofits with providers offering a range of services in areas such as tech support, content, market and fundraising. It employs 550 people, a count that is expected to grow as the company expands.
The company plans to use the proceeds from its public offering to develop AI-powered tools, cloud services and its Gloo 360 and Gloo Workspace platforms. Gloo has grown through acquisitions and plans to use some of the money raised to purchase additional platforms and service providers in the religious and nonprofit space.
The company had sought to go public earlier in the fall, but the federal government shutdown delayed SEC approvals of public offerings. The company’s current market value would rank it as Colorado’s 40th-largest public company, behind Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage.
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