Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch hints at IPO plans amid AI-driven growth

Vercel, a decade-old developer tools and website hosting company, is emerging as a beneficiary of the rapid rise in AI-generated applications and autonomous agents, even as many startups founded before the ChatGPT era struggle to adapt.

Speaking at the HumanX conference in San Francisco last week, CEO Guillermo Rauch highlighted how the landscape of software creation has fundamentally changed. “When I started this company, only tens of millions of people could deploy,” he said. “Now we’re seeing that everybody in the world can create an app.”

This surge in app creation, especially by non-developers using AI tools, has significantly boosted Vercel’s growth. According to reports from The Information and Forbes, the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) has jumped from $100 million at the start of 2024 to a run rate of $340 million by the end of February 2026.

With that level of expansion, questions around a potential public listing are becoming more prominent. When asked about IPO plans during the conference, Rauch indicated that the company is already operating with the mindset of a publicly traded firm. “Vercel is very much a work-in-public company,” he said.

However, he stopped short of committing to a specific timeline. “There’s no perfect timeline or quarter I can give. The company’s ready and getting more ready for it every day,” Rauch added.

The broader IPO environment has been uncertain. While 2026 was initially expected to be a strong year for tech listings, a recent downturn in software stocks — driven in part by concerns about AI disruption — has slowed momentum. Apart from high-profile companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, most discussions around IPOs have largely quieted. Market observers suggest that once one of these major players goes public, it could reopen the window for others.

Despite this environment, Rauch’s comments suggest that Vercel is actively preparing for a future listing. When asked what investors should understand about the company, he pointed to the expanding infrastructure opportunity. “The total addressable market of infrastructure has now grown, and it simply has no ceiling,” he said.

Vercel’s strategy is closely tied to the rise of AI-driven software creation. As more applications are generated by AI agents rather than human developers, the company aims to position itself as the primary platform for hosting and deploying those applications.

“Agents are very prolific at deploying,” Rauch noted, adding that approximately 30% of the applications currently running on Vercel’s platform have already been created by AI agents.

He also emphasised that AI tools are making it easier for users to build custom software rather than purchasing pre-existing solutions. “All of that software … it needs to go somewhere, and we think it’s going to be Vercel,” he said.

The company was last valued at $9.3 billion following a $300 million Series F funding round led by Accel in September. Vercel competes with major infrastructure providers like Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services, while also offering its own development tools, such as v0, a platform for building websites and applications through “vibe coding.”