Finally an IPO to get the tech world excited.
While venture funding this year has reached levels not seen since the dot-com bubble and private valuations have exploded, the public markets have been largely relegated to the sidelines
Leave it to a storage company to try and break the ice.
Pure Storage, which ranked 16th on the latest CNBC Disruptor list, filed its IPO prospectus on Wednesday, announcing tentative plans to raise up to $300 million. Even at that amount, which is likely to increase, it would be the biggest deal for a U.S. enterprise technology company this year, and certainly the most high-profile name since Box in January.
Read MoreMeet the 2015 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies
Fitness tracker Fitbit raised $732 million in its IPO, and GoDaddy, which was backed by private equity investors, raised $460 million.
There's much more activity in the late-stage venture market. According to CB Insights, more than 100 companies have raised private rounds of at least $100 million this year.
"We're seeing fewer companies have the need to test the public markets, because they can get so much in the private markets," said Anand Sanwal, CEO of New York-based CB Insights
In a blog post, First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman called the phenomenon a "private IPO" boom and said that one benefit for companies is that "it removes arbitrary time constraints on growth and profits."
That means all eyes will be on Pure when it finally debuts, likely in the next couple months.
Pure develops flash storage arrays, which are rapidly replacing the old spinning discs that businesses used in data centers. Pure promotes its technology as delivering 10 times the performance of legacy hardware from the likes of EMC and NetApp. It was built for an era of massive cloud applications and big data.
EMC has been fighting back with a product called XtremIO, and was the leader in all-flash arrays as of the first half of 2014, with 22.6
Source: Pure Storage | YouTube
Pure Storage FlashArray.
percent of the market, according to IDC. Pure ranked second at 18.3 percent, followed by IBM at 16.7 percent and NetApp at 9.1 percent.
Read MoreHow a storage start-up scored an HBO cameo
Pure's revenue more than tripled in the first quarter to $74.1 million from a year earlier and topped full-year 2014 revenue of $42.7 million. Pure's 1,100 customers include Nielsen, Sierra Nevada Brewing and ConocoPhillips.
Unlike its closest
