Strava has confirmed reports that it is seeking to go public and be listed on the stock exchange.
In an interview with the Financial Times, published this week, the company's CEO Michael Martin said the American fitness tracking app company had an "intention to go public at some point".
Being listed "provides easy access to capital in case we wanted to do more and bigger acquisitions", Martin said, although he did not say when the move would be happening.
Strava is the home of tracking and sharing rides for many cyclists, providing a hub for routes, fitness, and connecting with friends too.
Last month, Reuters reported that Strava was exploring hiring investment banks for an initial public offering (IPO).
Martin joined Strava as CEO in December 2023, and earlier this year the company hired a new Chief Financial Officer, Matt Anderson, who spent six years as the head of corporate finance and strategy at Block, Inc. (formerly Square) and led their IPO efforts in 2015.
According to Reuters, Strava invited banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to pitch for roles on the IPO. It could happen as early as 2026, but sources told Reuters that the company was yet to finalise how much it plans to raise and the valuation it will seek for the IPO.
Strava has around 50 million active users in 2025, according to the FT. "Growth profiles like ours . . . are particularly uncommon, especially at scale,” Martin said. "It attracts a lot of attention — especially from bankers."
After a round of funding earlier this year, Strava's valuation was set at US$2.2 billion, including debt, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. This followed the acquisitions of AI-driven training apps Runna and The Breakaway.
Strava's previous fundraising took place in 2020, when the company was valued at US$1.5 billion.
Separately, earlier this month, Strava took legal action against Garmin over patent infringements, and also new developer guidelines.
The legal action itself is over two patents, one relating to segments, and the other to heatmaps, but Strava has since said that the issue is developer guidelines for its API partners. New Garmin rules, according to Strava, mean that all activities recorded on Garmin should be shared with the Garmin logo.
Strava is effectively demanding that Garmin ceases selling all devices that contribute to heatmaps and use the segments on Garmin Connect, which is pretty much all of Garmin’s fitness watches and most of its bike computers.
