Kevin Kennedy is a Partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP and currently serves as the Global Head of the Firm’s Technology Practice. Since helping to found the Firm’s Palo Alto office more than 20 years ago, Kevin has represented issuers and underwriters on many of the highest-profile securities transactions undertaken by the leading technology and life science companies of this century. Recent highlights include representing the underwriters in Airbnb’s $3.83 billion IPO and Airbnb in its April 2020 $1 billion investment from Silver Lake Partners; financial advisors in the direct listing by Roblox, which valued the company at $45 billion and was the most valuable company to have ever completed a direct listing at that time; XPeng in its 2020 IPO, the largest IPO ever completed by an electric vehicle manufacturer; and 10x Genomics in the largest life sciences IPO of 2019.
Kevin also represented the underwriters in Tesla Motors’ IPO and on all 15 subsequent public offerings, raising more than $25 billion in total proceeds, and Goldman Sachs in Apple’s $17 billion bond offering—then the largest-ever corporate debt offering—and all subsequent 26 offerings raising more than $155 billion in total proceeds, which is the largest sum ever raised by a corporate issuer in history. Over his 30-year career he has helped take public a number of household names across a wide range of industries including eBay, lululemon, Sonos and DropBox.
Kevin was recently recognized by Law360 as a 2021 Technology “MVP” for his work on several of the year’s highest-profile offerings, including Airbnb’s IPO and Roblox’s direct listing, and selected among the “Top 100 Lawyers in California” for 2020 by the Daily Journal. He was also recognized as a 2018 Law360 Technology “MVP” and named the “Lawyer of the Week” by the Financial Times of London, as well as a “Trusted Adviser” by The Recorder. Kevin is a lead co-author of the book titled, “IPOs: Considerations for Business Owners and Executives Taking their Company Public,” recently published by Donnelley Financial Solutions.
Kevin currently serves as a Board Member for the Bowles Hall Foundation and as a Member of the Board of Trustees for the UC Berkeley Foundation.
Education
B.A., U.C. Davis (1988)
J.D., U.C. Berkeley (1991)
Kevin Patrick Kennedy is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Spring 2025 | 248.51 sec. 001 | IPOs and Going Public Transactions | Spring 2024 | 248.51 sec. 001 | IPOs and Going Public Transactions | View Teaching Evaluation | Spring 2023 | 248.51 sec. 001 | IPOs and Going Public Transactions | View Teaching Evaluation |
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