SUSE IPO
EXPERIENCE

An IPO that didn’t happen on a stage—but across a system. After 28 years in the market SUSE, the world’s largest independent open-source software company, planned to go public. With the world around us right in a pandemic and radically different from just a year ago, SUSE had to rethink how to make their debut on the Frankfurt Stock exchange a historical day. Most IPOs are closed events. This one was built to be open. SUSE reimagined its public listing as a narrative experience—designed not just for investors on the floor, but for a global audience. Instead of a single moment, the IPO became a system of connected experiences: a large-scale projection takeover of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a fully virtual XR keynote streamed worldwide.

At the core was a simple idea: If open source is about participation, the IPO should be too. The façade turned into a living canvas—telling the story of SUSE through code, innovation, and impact. At the same time, the traditional bell-ringing ceremony was transformed into an immersive XR environment, bringing people into the event from anywhere in the world. What is usually exclusive became accessible. What is usually static became dynamic. A shift from financial milestone to brand experience. Because when even an IPO becomes participatory, it stops being just a listing and starts becoming a statement.

From a single line of code we transformed the world.

For SUSE’s IPO announcement we developed a virtual projection takeover of the Deutsche Börse Façade. We took our way to Frankfurt and hijacked literally the facade of the stock exchange as we turned it into an open SUSE staging. Trough a mixture of projection mapping and a CGI Motion Design Format, we celebrated SUSE’s innovative and ground-breaking past while capturing the company’s aspirations as a publicly listed company. Open source is in their DNA – for their products but also for the way how to communicate and invite everybody. While other Companies do an IPO in a close group – we invited everyone to participate. This Video became the Teaser to raise awareness online for the IPO day.

With reference to the company’s history, we staged some highlights of products and solutions created by the SUSE Linux code, such as the software for autonomous driving, health solutions to decode human DNA and satellite monitoring for global warming.

With the Power of many we transformed the world.

The power of many, the power of community, is what has made SUSE great. If they’re going public after 30 years, it’s thanks to their employees, partners and community who have always made SUSE special and taken a different path than the competition. On May 18th Melissa Di Donato announced that SUSE is going public, she did it the open source way and as a woman in tech. Completely in a XR studio with unreal content during her 20 minutes Keynote. Live.

CEO Melissa Di Donato and SUSE’s employees came together for a virtual bell ringing ceremony. For this we created an interactive XR Studio keynote, shot in London, directed in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin and streamed globally, to celebrate the Listing Day and IPO ceremony virtually in an immersive environment. International press covered the event extensively with reports in CNBC Europe, Wirtschaftswoche, Bloomberg or Reuters.

Together with the SUSE Brand Team in Seattle, the ACNE Team in Hamburg and Berlin and external production partners in Cologne and Frankfurt, the international and functionally mixed team was able to develop and launch two innovative lighthouse projects within just 7 weeks of production time, thus creating a unique IPO ceremony for SUSE CEO Melissa Di Donato, SUSE employees, the open source community, customers, partners and investors alike.

Due to the pandemic the team worked completely remotely during the while production time.