Liquid Death CEO declines to confirm IPO timeline, says company will weigh listing or merger later

Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario declined to confirm a timeline for the beverage brand’s initial public offering in an interview with Bloomberg. The comment comes even though the company hired Goldman Sachs in 2023 and brought in a new chief financial officer from Pepsi. Cessario said the business is currently focused on building profitability at scale rather than locking in a specific exit path, and that it would consider either an IPO or a merger when the timing makes sense. The interview also touched on one of Liquid Death’s viral ads centered on AI data centers. The campaign showed people mailing urine samples to AI data centers as a satire on their water consumption. Cessario said the ad was not an attack on AI itself. Instead, he said it was meant to highlight what he described as a real issue: large amounts of water evaporating from closed-loop data centers during cooling. He also discussed how AI is being used inside the company’s ad agency work. According to Cessario, AI can handle routine production tasks well, but it cannot replace top creative talent. In his view, the technology is more likely to eliminate mediocre marketing output than high-end creative work.