For most of modern corporate history, going public was the natural next step for a successful company. You built something valuable, you scaled, and at a certain size you ran an IPO. That was the playbook.
Over the last decade, the playbook has quietly changed. Companies are in no rush to list, and many of the most valuable and influential businesses in the world remain private. These are not fragile startups. They are global platforms with real revenue, thousands of employees, and valuations that would place them among the largest public technology companies if they listed tomorrow. The question is simple: Why are they now waiting so much longer to go public?
The IPO Shift
Twenty years ago, a company that wanted to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and make long-term bets had few options. Public markets were the only pool deep enough to fund the rounds needed to scale, so the default move was to list. IPOs were not only liquidity events. They were financing events, the moment real growth capital arrived. In the late 1990s for example, it was common for technology companies to go public within six or seven years of founding. Amazon listed in 1997, about three years after it was founded. eBay went public in 1998, also within roughly three years. Yahoo reached the public markets in 1996, barely two years in.
That role has shifted into private hands. Late-stage investors can now write checks large enough to fund the growth that once required an IPO. In 2025 and 2026, OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, and Anthropic raised $65 billion at a valuation near $965 billion. These were the two largest private financings on record, each larger by amount raised than any public offering in history up to that point. Databricks reached a $134 billion valuation, and a company as young as Cursor climbed toward $50 billion before being recently acquired by SpaceX. The capital that once arrived only on IPO day now arrives years earlier, from large venture funds, sovereign wealth funds, private equity, and even other technology companies. The predictable result is that the median age at IPO has climbed, and for top-tier technology companies it has climbed further still, because there is no longer any rush to go public.
The 2026 Window
None of this means the listing window has closed. After a multi-year recovery, more than 200 U.S. listings raised about $47 billion in 2025, and 2026 is shaping up as the most active environment since 2021, supported by steadier markets following the rate cuts of late 2025, narrowing valuation gaps, and a backlog of sponsor-backed companies under pressure to exit. The pipeline is historic. SpaceX, after absorbing xAI in early 2026 at a combined $1.25 trillion, went public on June 12, 2026, at a $1.75 trillion valuation (the largest IPO ever) and quickly crossed a $2.1 trillion market cap. Anthropic filed confidentially in June 2026 at a valuation near $965 billion, and OpenAI made its own confidential filing just a week later.
But the reopening confirms the pattern rather than reversing it. These companies are arriving so large that the long-standing practice of floating 15% to 25% of a company becomes impractical, and many are expected to sell only low single-digit percentages of their stock. They are entering the public markets later, bigger, and with most of their value already created in private hands.
Why Going Public Lost Its Pull
As private markets grew stronger, public markets grew harder. Going public today carries real costs. Quarterly earnings cycles pull attention toward short-term results. Regulatory and compliance obligations arrive overnight. Every decision is measured against public peers, whether or not the comparison fits. So, the conversation has inverted. It used to be a question of why a company would not go public. Now it is a question of what a company actually gains by listing right now. For many, the honest answer is less than it used to. Private markets let strong businesses raise enormous sums, avoid short-term public pressure, and give early employees and investors partial liquidity through secondaries: private share sales that let insiders cash out without the company listing. Waiting is no longer hesitation. It is strategy. And the quiet implication is that much of the value is now created before the IPO ever happens.
Why IPOs Still Matter
IPOs are far from obsolete. They simply serve a different purpose now. They remain the ultimate source of liquidity. Secondaries help, but they do not scale forever, and at some point employees, early investors, and later-stage funds need continuous liquidity and real cash returns. Public markets solve that cleanly. Public stock is also a strategic currency, letting a company acquire others with shares rather than draining cash. Listing signals governance maturity, financial transparency, and durability, which helps with enterprise contracts, partnerships, and international expansion. And at sufficient scale, public scrutiny stops being a cost and becomes a feature, forcing sharper capital allocation and reducing key-person risk.
What This Means for Sponsors and Late-Stage Companies
The shift changes how the people who own and prepare these companies should think about timing. For sponsors, the private equity firms that own these businesses and must eventually return capital to their own investors, exit sequencing matters more than ever, because the choice is no longer simply to list or wait but a spectrum of secondaries, continuation vehicles, and partial listings. For late-stage companies, governance and reporting readiness can no longer be assembled in the months before a debut, because the market now expects public-company discipline from businesses already operating at public-company scale. And because most value now accrues privately, valuation discipline through late rounds becomes the difference between a clean listing and a markdown in public view. The companies that list well in this market are the ones that prepared to operate as public companies long before they had to.
Conclusion
IPOs did not lose their relevance. They lost their old role and took on a new one. They used to be the fuel for growth. Today, they are closer to an upgrade in liquidity, structure, and credibility. The companies that wait are not avoiding the public markets. They are entering them later, bigger, and with far less to prove. And that tells you less about the IPO itself than it does about how powerful private markets have become.
Sources
[1] Company announcements and Bloomberg and CNBC reporting on the OpenAI and Anthropic financing rounds and confidential filings, June 2026.
[2] Anthropic and OpenAI, confidential IPO filing announcements, June 2026.
[3] Bloomberg and Reuters reporting on SpaceX’s June 2026 public listing, market debut, and its combination with xAI.
[4] Crunchbase and US exchange data on 2025 IPO activity.
© Copyright 2026. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.
