Cloud computing company DigitalOcean raised a little over $775m in an initial public offering.

But shares in the company, trading under the ticker symbol DOCN, quickly fell around 10 percent, valuing the company at $4.48 billion.

The business went public via the traditional IPO route, rather than through the increasingly popular SPAC approach, used by Vertiv, IonQ, and others.

For breaking data center news, features, and opinions, subscribe to DCD's newsletter

A small fish in a big digital ocean

DigitalOcean operates fourteen data centers across the United States, India, Germany, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Singapore. All are leased from third-party data center providers.

"We do not own any real property," the company said in its S-1 filing. "We believe that our current facilities are adequate to meet our current needs and that additional or substitute space is available if needed to accommodate growth and expansion."

DigitalOcean said it has 570,000 individual and business customers in 185 countries around the world. Revenue has grown year on year, reaching $318m in 2020, while losses have held steady, rising $4m last year to $44m.

Those losses are far less than the billions Google Cloud burns every year, but equally far from the tens of billions AWS and Microsoft Azure rake in.

With a far smaller market cap, budget, and staff roster than the hyperscalers, DigitalOcean has leaned into the idea that simplicity can be a virtue.

"Our mission is to simplify cloud computing so developers and businesses can spend more time creating software that changes the world," CEO Yancey Spruill said in a letter to investors. "Simplicity is a core value to us."