Investors, bankers, and analysts say they expect a wave of IPOs from some of the most highly valued and recognizable start-ups over the next 18 to 24 months
SAN FRANCISCO — Jason Pressman spent Thursday morning cheering from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange as shares …
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits at the end of a long 'stay private' arc. Coverage from mid-2015 documented how start-ups were delaying IPOs while private valuations climbed, and the end of 2016 brought confirmation of the trough: both startup investment and IPO counts fell, with VCs pinning hopes on Snap Inc.'s listing to reopen the window.
By April 2018, the mood has flipped — investors, bankers, and analysts are calling for a wave of debuts from the most highly valued names within 18 to 24 months. The significance is that the backlog built during the stay-private years is finally being priced for public exit, a cycle that later coverage suggests keeps repeating at ever-larger scale, with reports that SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic alone could exceed the proceeds of roughly 200 US IPOs in a single year.
First-order effects
- Highly valued start-ups face direct pressure to file in the next 18 to 24 months, converting paper valuations into liquid public stock while the window bankers describe is open.
- Investment banks compete for underwriting mandates on the most recognizable names, and late-stage investors finally get the liquidity path that the 2016 drought denied them.
Second-order effects
- Public-market scrutiny of unit economics collides with private valuations inflated during the stay-private years, forcing pricing discipline on whichever companies actually list.
- VC firms with exits in hand gain fresh capital and track records, sharpening competition for the next generation of late-stage deals.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each reopening of the IPO window concentrates more value into fewer, larger listings — the endpoint visible in later reporting that three prospective mega-deals could outweigh hundreds of conventional IPOs in proceeds.
- The industry settles into a structural rhythm of multi-year private-hoarding phases punctuated by short, intense public-exit waves, making timing rather than readiness the decisive variable for founders and their backers.
The trend: Tech company exits are cycling into ever-larger, less frequent IPO waves, with each window concentrating public listings into a shrinking set of giant names.