Companies such as Stripe, SpaceX, and Databricks are showing that it's possible to scale into the tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars without ever becoming public.

Investors are pricing these companies through private and secondary markets — showing that the function an initial public offering (IPO) used to serve is already being replaced elsewhere. 

• PayPal Holdings stock is showing downward pressure. What’s next for PYPL stock?

One of the biggest forces eroding the traditional IPO pipeline is the rise of secondary markets. Late-stage companies can facilitate investor liquidity through structured secondary sales, tender offers and crossover rounds without listing publicly.

According to data from PitchBook, global transaction volumes for secondaries hit a record $226 billion in 2025, up 41% from 2024. 

"The secondaries world has expanded exponentially over the past three years," said Montserrat Serra-Janer, global head of Private Markets Sales (Securities Services and Prime Finance Sales) at JPMorgan Chase. "We've seen huge growth, and we're also seeing increased interest in our secondaries intermediation capabilities from both clients and prospects."

Companies typically wait an average of 10 to 12 years before seeking an IPO, now with the rise in secondaries, stakeholders can partially cash out every 12-24 months, removing incentives for companies to even go public in the first place.

Stripe, which operates as a global payment platform, has seen enormous scale; the firm has raised a total of $9.4 billion in funding over 19 rounds, according to Forge data. 

Meanwhile, its public market competitor, PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL), valuation has continuously been re-priced by public markets. As a result, its growth strategy has to find a balance between long-term investment growth and near-term earnings visibility.

PayPal used to be the end goal for fintech in public markets, while Stripe can reach that same scale without going public at all.

Databricks represents a similar pattern. The artificial intelligence company has been able to raise funding on a large scale while staying private, raising a total of $4 billion in funding over 12 rounds, according to Forge data. Instead of an IPO, the firm's valuation discovery has occurred through crossover investors and secondary deals.

SpaceX also proves the "no-IPO required" theory; the Elon Musk-founded company has relied on private capital raises and secondary transactions to create its own liquidity cycle throughout the years.

The company was valued at approximately $350 billion in 2024 and has grown to nearly $1.75 trillion as of February 2026, according to Forge data. Investors are pricing SpaceX like a public-scale aerospace and infrastructure company, although it never had to deal with earnings pressure or public disclosures.

The bottom line is companies such as Stripe, SpaceX, and Databricks aren't rejecting public markets outright — they're signaling that the public markets are no longer the only, or even the default, destination for scale. That growth highlights how private markets are increasingly capable of funding and valuing companies at a scale once reserved almost exclusively for public equities.

The IPO hasn't died, but it's no longer the only path to scale, liquidity or legitimacy for the world's biggest startups.

Photo: fadfebrian on Shutterstock.com