2026: A Mega-Cap IPO Odyssey? SpaceX, OpenAI, and What's Next in the Private-to-Public Pipeline

Anu Rajakumar: For years, some of the most consequential companies in technology have remained private far longer than historical norms would suggest. SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace and satellite communications juggernaut, is already a 24-year-old business. OpenAI's latest funding round values it at more than $800 billion. [NG7.1]Anthropic, Databricks, Stripe, Canva, Fanatics— the list of companies growing huge, while staying private, goes on and on.

Private markets have been functioning in ways we've never seen before, providing liquidity, enabling massive scale, and in many cases, removing the urgency to do an IPO altogether, but that appears to be changing. A significant pipeline of mega-cap private companies now appears headed toward public markets, potentially reshaping the public equity landscape when they arrive.

My name is Anu Rajakumar, and today I'm joined by two guests, Renos Savvides, head of Equity Capital Markets or ECM at Neuberger, and Paul Daggett, Managing Director on our Private Investment Portfolios and Co-Investments team, where he focuses on venture capital stage investing. Today we'll talk about what's driving the private-to-public shift, what the capital market environment looks like for these deals, and what it all means for the broader ecosystem. Renos and Paul, welcome to the show.

Renos Savvides: It's good to be here, Anu.

Paul Daggett: Thank you.

Anu Rajakumar: Paul, let's set the stage. We've all heard the term unicorn, meaning private companies worth over $1 billion, of which there are over 1,000 unicorns alone globally, but now we're actually talking about decacorns at $10 billion, hectocorns at $100 billion. So, break it down for us. What on earth has happened to private companies? Why are these companies staying private at these kinds of valuations? What does that tell us about how private capital works today versus, I don't know, let's say a decade ago or so?

Paul Daggett: Let me just expand on what you said. You're right, there's thousands of companies valued over $1 billion globally today, which are venture capital backed, and there are over 50 that are valued at over $10 billion in the US alone. Then, there's six valued over $100 billion today. Those are SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, Stripe, and Waymo. Obviously, all of these are very large companies operating at really public company scale and complexity. You could add one more company to that. For example, Anduril is rumored to be raising at $60 billion valuation now. If you added that to the other six, you'd have a private ‘Mag 7’ that has a $3 trillion valuation in private markets today in aggregate.

Private markets have changed very, very significantly. To get to the question of why that is, I think the first thing is really it's the supply of capital. When you look at private markets today, they have changed very greatly. Go back 20, 25 years, then VC-backed companies were just that. They were backed by VC funds, whereas today they might be backed by VC funds, growth funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, as well as strategics. An example of that is in OpenAI's round that they just closed, raising $120 billion in the private markets. $50 billion came from Amazon, $30 billion came from each of NVIDIA and SoftBank.

You've seen this massive expansion of capital available in private markets. Actually, one thing I didn't mention, there's also SPVs, so special purpose vehicles that are put together usually by existing investors in venture funds and hedge funds. That gives another cohort of co-investors access to these companies and obviously leads to even more capital being available in private markets today. The big driver of the change is this supply of capital, meaning that companies can raise capital in the private markets in a way they just couldn't 20 or 25 years ago.

The other important point though, is the second reason to go public is liquidity. That's for founders and for employees. Obviously, if you've come up with a brilliant idea and you've worked to build it to a certain scale, at some point you want to be able to actually take liquidity from that. Today, again, that has changed. That is possible now in private markets. We're seeing these large tender offers occurring in private markets. OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, and others have all done these in recent months, at very large scale, which means existing employees, founders can take some capital off the table, sell that to institutional investors, and the company can stay private. Really, it's those two things that have meant the market has changed. Now, companies, to a certain degree, certainly companies like the ones I mentioned, can stay private as long as they like. It's really their choice as to when they want to go public.

Anu Rajakumar: That's a great background. The supply of capital has really changed the ability to raise capital compared to many years ago, and liquidity is available now where maybe wasn't quite so easily and readily available. That's the private side of the picture. Thank you, Paul. Now, Renos, you're watching all of this from the public markets perspective, and equity capital markets have had a complicated few years with rate volatility and risk-off windows, geopolitical noise, for example. As we sit here in 2026, what are you actually seeing, and is the public market really ready to absorb what could be coming?

Renos Savvides: In spite of the recent volatility, ECM activity has actually been pretty robust in 2026. If we look at common equity volumes in 2026 over the same period in 2025, we're up actually, about 20%. It's a pretty meaningful jump. A lot of that is driven by secondary activity, so follow-ons and block trades. What's behind that is some early lock-up releases on the part of financial sponsor community. We've had deals happen barely two months into a six-month lock-up period. That's one theme. Then the second theme driving the follow-on market is an uptake in E&P activity. That's perhaps unsurprising given what's going on in the crude oil market. IPO volumes are up as well.

Now, here some context is important. A lot of deals that were scheduled to go in Q4 2025 were actually pushed to the first quarter of 2026. The reason for that was that the SEC was shut for a meaningful period in Q4 2025. We've had this unnatural bump in Q1 IPO activity. Really, the story in the IPO market so far this year is price performance. There's been a huge dispersion of performance among the IPO vintage in 2026. I wish I could point to a single overarching theme, be it sector or size, that's driving price performance. Really, it comes down to individual deals and individual assets. Companies with defensible moats, with good business plans, with a viable growth algorithm coming at reasonable valuations tend to be the ones that perform best.

Anu Rajakumar: Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, let's get to the pipeline itself because I think this is probably where it really gets interesting. You've got publicly filed deals. You've got a shadow backlog that's been building for a number of years. Then you have the handful of mega-cap names that everyone's really talking about, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, et cetera. Renos, how does the public market's infrastructure actually handle something like a potential multi-billion-dollar raise? Then, Paul, I'll ask the same question of you, but from where you sit in private markets, how are you thinking about the sequencing and scale of what's yet to come?

Renos Savvides: It's going to be a massive undertaking, Anu. Just to put things in context, the size of, say, the SpaceX IPO has been rumored anywhere from $30 to $50 to $75 billion. That's the notional offering size. The biggest IPO to date was Saudi Aramco at $29 billion. The one after that would be Alibaba at $25 billion. We're talking about orders of magnitude of two to three X, the next largest IPOs. On a notional basis, that's a lot of paper to put away. I think a lot of these issuers will have to rely on non-traditional sources of capital, pension, sovereign wealth, et cetera. I also think there'll be a very large component of retail distribution in all of these IPOs. The press has reported that up to 30% of the SpaceX IPO could go to retail investors. In my view, that's not just US retail. That'll be global retail, Europe, Japan, Asia, et cetera.

Anu Rajakumar: That's meaningfully more than typically allocated to retail, right?

Renos Savvides: Correct. It's typically a very small sliver that ends up in retail hands. The other point I'd make is that for the first time, index inclusion has been a very hot topic among IPO companies. The reason for that is that there's about $30 trillion in AUM globally tracking the major indices. Recently, Nasdaq just announced that they will shrink the time for index inclusion eligibility to 15 days. That's very impactful given the amount of AUM that tracks the Nasdaq-100. I would expect to see some passive index demand from index funds and ETFs comprise a major component of demand for all of these offerings.

Anu Rajakumar: And Paul, what are your thoughts on the private side?

Paul Daggett: I would say it depends what you mean by pipeline. What I mean by that is there are a lot of companies that are IPO ready, but going back to what I was saying earlier, how many of them want to go public at this point in time? That said, there are a number of candidates, as you mentioned, that are more obvious. SpaceX, we just talked about, that is expected to be a June IPO, according to media reports. I think looking at the VC-backed market, it's seen as something of a gating item, I think, in that a lot of people are looking into that to see how successful it is, how it goes, and for other venture-backed companies that might come after that. Obviously, that's going to be something to watch very, very closely. Of course, SpaceX is a very different business. There's really nothing like it, but nevertheless, I think it is important for the health of the VC-backed market.

Following that, really, Anthropic and OpenAI have both, again, been rumored to be preparing for IPOs later in 2026 or in 2027. These are both companies with enormous revenues reported to have run-rate revenues of $25 billion in the case of OpenAI, $19 billion in the case of Anthropic, and both are growing at incredible rates. On top of that, I think when I look at the public markets, and Renos may have a slightly different opinion, but there are only so many ways to really invest in AI in the public markets. Of course, there's Nvidia, and Alphabet, and Amazon, but there's not a broad cohort of companies where you can invest in AI.

I think on top of the financial metrics, and the scale these companies are already at, there is this AI story that would be in huge demand, I would think, in today's market. I think those three stand out as ones that have been talked about quite a bit. Close behind, Databricks, another company's being discussed quite a bit, is preparing for an IPO. Again, very much an AI story in the infrastructure space.

The other company that comes to mind, really, is Stripe, and that one's a little bit different, because there you have a company that has completed five employee tenders already. One of the founders actually said earlier this year that, in his opinion, a Stripe IPO is a solution looking for a problem. It doesn't appear that Stripe is on that IPO path. That's why I say when you look at the pipeline, it depends on what you mean, because there's companies that could go public, but may not want to.

Anu Rajakumar: Sure. Maybe, Paul, staying with you on this topic. The VC community has really been waiting quite a long time for exits. Do you think, from your perspective, does this pipeline, however you might define it, does it finally change that picture, or are you finding that there still may be a gap between the headline excitement and what actually lands in LP accounts?

Paul Daggett: I think the exit environment so far this year, at least for VC-backed companies, has been slower than, probably, might've been hoped and expected. So far, there's been a handful of VC-backed IPOs. This pipeline is really for June and beyond, I think. Obviously, what we've had happen with the software selloff and a war in Iran has greatly impacted that market environment. Probably goes without saying. The market has, from my perspective, been relatively quiet. If some of these big IPOs get out, yes, that would massively change things in terms of both sentiment, but obviously also in terms of capital flows.

Anu Rajakumar: text

Speaker Now, Renos, I have another question. Just given the heightened volatility that we've been seeing in public markets, I'm just curious, how would an extended period of that volatility change the picture of what we've been discussing today?

Renos Savvides: The primary markets take their cues from the secondary markets. If we see an extended or protracted period of market volatility or a big drawdown in the equity markets, I think it's going to be very tough for that IPO pipeline to pull through. Even the strongest candidates, the likes of which we've been talking about today, may postpone or hold off on their IPOs for a bit longer.

Paul Daggett: One other thing I would point out is, certainly for VCs, the IPO itself isn't a liquidity event. At least, not really. There's typically a six-month lock-up. In terms of actual cash coming back, if these IPOS are successful, most of that would still be happening in 2027 and beyond. It'll be a good start and a good precursor, but the actual liquidation of stock would take a little bit longer, most likely. What it would do, of course, is really be a positive thing, I think, for VC sentiment, for these companies, and for LPs to see those distributions on their way back to them, because certainly it has been a bit of a quieter period over the last few years..

Anu Rajakumar: Paul, you touched on software exits being particularly difficult at the moment, and that ties into something I want to dig into, and that's artificial intelligence. As we all know, AI's reshaping every sector. Does the AI wave help or hurt the IPO outlook? Said another way, are we seeing a rising tide that lifts all boats, or is the AI wave is a result of that more selective, where just a few AI native winners thrive, while others may continue to struggle?

Paul Daggett: I think when you look at the cohort of businesses out there, there is an overwhelming bias to companies that are AI native. I think that is one of the differences between the public market and the private markets. The private markets, in terms of VC-backed companies, overwhelmingly today, new companies that are being backed and even companies that are two, three, four years old, are AI native. One of the things to remember is that ChatGPT was publicly launched in 2022, but, of course, it was founded in 2015. AI in private markets is something that VCs have been working with and working on for many years at this point. I think the venture capital environment in general for several years has been highly, highly focused on this area.

When you look at what's happened in public markets, having exposure to some of these businesses in a private portfolio, in some ways, you could view as a hedge because whether or not you believe software valuations have fundamentally forever been changed by AI is something we could debate in another podcast. Even in today's market, as we've seen software come down. We've seen OpenAI and Anthropic obviously going pretty dramatically in the other direction. I think at the moment, if you have public and privates, hopefully you have something of a hedge in place there. Obviously, as these companies come to the public markets, there'll be a lot of other opportunities to really play that theme in the public markets.

Renos Savvides: One thing I've noticed from my perspective, Anu, is that there's no shortage of software companies that want to test the ability to go public. We've seen that in the volume of testing-the-waters meetings that we're taking. Really, what these companies and their owners want to know is, is there a market publicly, currently for a software IPO? Candidly, I'm not sure software sentiment in public markets is where it needs to be for some of these companies to go public. This is across the software spectrum, vertical SaaS, cybersecurity, et cetera. What I think you'll see is issuers and their private equity owners and venture capital owners wait to find the bottom in sentiment and a valuation reset before pushing forward with some of their most prized assets.

Anu Rajakumar: Those are great points. All right. Bringing all this together, whether our listeners are here, whether they're an LP in a venture fund, they're a multi-asset allocator, whether a public equity investor, I think the question on many people's minds are, how do I get access and how do I think about sizing? Maybe Paul, starting with you on the private side, for those earlier in the capital stack, what's the right framework that you're thinking about for positioning ahead of a wave like this? Then, Renos, from the public side, what do you think investors should be understanding about how these deals actually get allocated and structured? Maybe Paul, if I can start with you on how to view this as a private markets investor.

Paul Daggett: Absolutely, it's a good question. I think it's an important issue, and one that's probably going to get more and more difficult over time. Ultimately, I think, going back to what I talked about earlier, we've also seen innovation in the venture capital-backed market. We've seen various different types of investors coming into the market. We've seen SPVs. We've even seen some publicly traded, closed-end VC funds in the space. You can see the interest is there. I would still argue the best way to access that market is really through more of the traditional GP/LP venture capital funds, because they allow you to get earlier into these kind of companies at valuations, which can be very, very attractive if you can get that access.

Renos Savvides: From my perspective, Anu, I don't think access will be the biggest issue for some of these mega IPOs. These are companies that don't have a supply problem. The supply part of the equation is quite large. The issue will be the demand side of the equation. There are a number of ways investors can get access to these companies, if and when they come public, through mutual funds, through private funds. We've talked about how there will likely be a significant portion allocated to retail investors. I think that will all be there.

The question to me is how do they get over the finish line? Paul alluded to this earlier, but I think a fundamental point here is that these are transformational companies. These are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. It isn't every year that there's a SpaceX or an OpenAI or an Anthropic. That's what I ultimately think will lead to enough demand to get these companies over the finish line, if and when they go public.

Paul Daggett: Just to be clear, I fully agree with that. I think they're amazing companies that potentially have a huge amount of growth ahead of them. Going back to what I said earlier, I think one of the things that has changed in the venture capital market over time is more and more of the gains that might have happened as a public company have been happening as a private company.

It takes us back to the first thing we talked about, where you see SpaceX with a speculated IPO valuation of $1.5 trillion or more, and you see OpenAI valued at $840 billion. A [NG8.1]lot of that would have occurred in the public markets in the past. Those examples I gave with a Google or an Amazon, most of that value accretion happened in the public markets. I think more of that today has been happening in the VC market, [NG9.1]which is why I think accessing in the private markets, if you can, is a good way to invest in these themes.

Renos Savvides: The last thing I mentioned is that there aren't a lot of PMs who are willing to sit out these deals. You don't want to be that portfolio manager whose boss comes around, and you say, "Well, you know what? I just didn't think SpaceX was right for us." I think there'll be a lot of pent-up demand, because people are scared of missing. These are IPOs that are of size enough that they could really drive overall performance in any given fund. I think you'll have that dynamic work as well.

Anu Rajakumar: The FOMO dynamic.

Renos Savvides: Indeed.

Anu Rajakumar: Excellent. Well, thank you both so much for your time today. Before I let you go, I do have a quick bonus question that I'll ask both of you to answer. We've been spending this episode talking about unicorns and decacorns, these multi-billion dollar companies, but what I'd like to ask you both is, outside of our industry, what is something in your everyday life, whether a product, a habit, or a place that you think is wildly undervalued and deserves way more attention than it gets? Renos?

Renos Savvides: I like to go on walks in SoHo, close to where I live. I think it's incredibly valuable to remove yourself from the day-to-day that we live all the time, and clear your mind and think about things. IPOs are my passion, so I end up thinking about things like Databricks and SpaceX, and all the other companies that may go public. I just put in my AirPods, and I listen, and then I absorb, and I think about what may be going on. I can't overstate the value of separating a little bit from your machine, going on a walk, absorbing the environment, and helping that form your views on some of these companies.

Anu Rajakumar: I love that. That's great. Thank you. What about you, Paul?

Paul Daggett: When you say that, what springs to my mind is national parks. I grew up in the UK, and I live in the US. It always amazes me when I meet someone who hasn't been to some of the national parks here, because I think they're truly amazing. Maybe they're not undervalued, but I certainly don't think they're overvalued. I think they're just amazing places to go, and there's so many of them. They're so varied, and I love doing that.

Anu Rajakumar: Do you have a particular favorite or one that you've been to recently that you would like to mention?

Paul Daggett: I think my favorite is Glacier National Park because it's slightly more removed, less cars, comes back to hiking, and you've actually just got to get out there and see it yourself. You can't drive around and see it. You have to go on hikes, and there's obviously wildlife and beautiful scenery and a lot less people around, so it's amazing.

Anu Rajakumar: Yes. No, I agree. Zion National Park is one of my favorites as well.

Paul Daggett: Yes.

Anu Rajakumar: Paul, Renos, what a conversation. I really feel like we've barely scratched the surface here, but I'll try to land the plane, a few just summary comments from what stood out to me from our conversation. We talked at the top of the episode about how we've really entered uncharted territory in private markets in this shift towards IPO. The companies that we've been talking about today, they're not traditional startups anymore. SpaceX, OpenAI, Databricks, et cetera, these are public company-scale businesses that have chosen to stay private for longer. Paul, as you mentioned, that's for a few different reasons, but supply of capital, the ability to raise capital very differently than 20 years ago, is one big factor. Having liquidity become available, another factor.

Renos, you spoke about how public markets have shown lots of sign of life. The equity capital market volumes are up meaningfully in 2026 relative to a year ago. We spoke about for private market investors, the venture and LP investors, critical to have the right relationships to be able to access some of the best funds to have access to the deals that we're speaking about today. Renos, you spoke about how the access for retail investors could look very different in this next IPO wave and how portfolio managers are certainly eager to get involved in that today. Paul and Renos, once again, thank you so much for being here. This has been a great conversation, and I look forward to seeing how everything unfolds in the coming weeks and months.

Renos Savvides: It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Paul Daggett: Thank you very much.

Anu Rajakumar: To our listeners, if you've enjoyed what you've heard today on Disruptive Forces, you can subscribe to the show from wherever you listen to your podcast, or you can visit our website at nb.com/disruptiveforces, where you can find previous episodes, as well as more information about our firm and offerings.