Companies now wait 11 years to list, shifting returns private

What's New

Value creation in growth equity has moved into the private phase of a company's life. In Growth Investing in Private Markets: How Times Have Changed, Morgan Stanley Private Credit & Equity argues that IPO-worthy companies now stay private longer and raise more late-stage rounds before listing. The median age at IPO was 6.9 years in 2014. It reached 11 years in 2025. Public buyers have paid the price. Since 2021, post-IPO returns have trailed the S&P 500 by 100 percentage points. Allocators who wait for the listing are buying the back half of the growth curve.

Why It Matters

The finding challenges allocators who treat public equity as the efficient way to own the next generation of market leaders. Late-stage capital is also crowding into fewer names. Companies with six or more funding rounds typically drew 25% of VC capital in a given year. In 2025 their share reached 40%. Premier rounds are often oversubscribed several times, so access now shapes outcomes as much as selection.

By The Numbers

• 40.6% of reported US unicorn values were at least 3 years old, because the companies had stopped raising.

• 635 US unicorns remain after PitchBook replaced stale marks with updated estimates. The reported count is 857.

• ~14% of unicorns fell out each year after 2021. The prior average was about 5%.

• Nearly 2x growth in estimated US unicorn value in 2025, on the smaller revalued base.

Zoom In

AI is where the shift is sharpest.

• AI companies raise a new round every 1.32 years at the median. Non-AI companies wait 1.85 years.

• OpenAI disclosed annualized revenue of $50 billion. It stood at $4 billion 24 months earlier.

• Top AI-native start-ups reached in under 3 years the aggregate value that public SaaS companies took 20 years to build.

• Faster round cadence opens more entry points. Underwriting gets harder, since many of these companies did not exist 5 years ago.

The Wrap

Late-stage private growth now captures much of the compounding that public markets used to deliver at listing. The case is strongest for scaled, public-quality companies built on transformative technology, with AI the clearest example. It weakens if the 2026 mega-IPOs trade well and draw younger companies back to public markets sooner. It also fails for allocators who lack access to oversubscribed rounds or the diligence to tell live marks from stale ones. The first-year trading record of the 2026 IPO class should test this by late 2027.