~7 yrs
Average buyout hold at exit, 2025
Versus 5 to 6 years in 2010 to 2021. Source: Bain, Global PE Report 2026.
32,000
Unsold PE-owned companies
Worth about $3.8T worldwide. Source: Bain, Global PE Report 2026.
3,657
U.S.-listed domestic operating companies
End of 2025, versus a 7,451 peak in 1997. Source: Ritter, CRSP data.
$8.6T
Global unicorn value, Q1 2026
Across 1,680 companies. Source: PitchBook Global Unicorn Tracker.
The thesis in five points
A turnover model meets a shrinking exit
- Capital is stuck. Buyout holds average about seven years at exit (Bain). U.S. median holds reached 5.9 to 6.0 years in 2025 (Private Equity Info). LP distributions have stayed below 15% of NAV for a record four years (Bain). Chapter 1
- The public market shrank. U.S. listings fell from 8,025 in 1996 to 4,315 in 2023. The U.S. has 12.9 listed firms per million people versus 24.5 in other developed countries (Doidge, Karolyi, Shen and Stulz). Chapter 2
- The market became a barbell. The largest managers face position-size floors and ownership limits (5% and 10% thresholds in law), so smaller companies are hard to own. Companies in the middle have one full exit: an IPO big enough to matter. Chapter 3
- A wave is queued. 1,680 unicorns worth $8.6T (PitchBook), 13,325 U.S. PE-backed companies (PitchBook via CBIZ), and large names private for a decade or more. SpaceX's record IPO in June 2026 showed demand exists, but one deal does not clear a backlog. Chapter 4
- Tokenization is the bridge. It adds a third route between owning a whole asset and owning a slice through a vehicle. About $39B of distributed real-world assets are on-chain (RWA.xyz), and rules are arriving with dates. Chapter 5
Bottom line. A $13T asset class built on a four to five year turnover model now depends on a public market with about half the listed companies of 1996. Holds stay long until the on-ramp widens, through bigger IPOs, better small-cap plumbing, or tokenized access.
The mechanism
How capital gets stuck
Money goes in through LP commitments and comes out only when a company is sold or listed. When the IPO route narrows, more exits become sales to another sponsor, and the hold clock starts again.
Figures: PE AUM $13.6T, H1 2024 (McKinsey/Preqin); 32,000 unsold companies and distributions under 15% of NAV (Bain 2026); 90 U.S. operating company IPOs in 2025 (Ritter). Dashed paths are partial or emerging.
Chapter 1: Stuck capital
Hold periods are at a record
No free source publishes a continuous annual series, so these are the points each provider has released, all by exit year.
Hold period at exit, years
Selected published readings
Every recent reading sits above the 4.7 to 5.0 year band that held from 2015 to 2022 (Private Equity Info).
Years from entry to exit, by exit year. Bar scale 0 to 8 years. Providers differ (mean vs median, U.S. vs global, all PE vs buyout), so read the direction; do not splice the series. Sources: Preqin via Private Banker International; PitchBook; Private Equity Info (May 2026); With Intelligence via S&P Global; Bain GPER 2026.
PE got much bigger
Global closed-end PE AUM, trillions of dollars
Bar scale $0 to $14T. Source: McKinsey Global Private Markets Report 2025, Preqin data.
PE funds in market
Bar scale 0 to 6,000 funds. Sources: Preqin; Paul Weiss citing Preqin.
The public on-ramp narrowed
U.S. operating company IPOs, selected years
Source: Jay Ritter, IPO Statistics (University of Florida), Table 1. 677 in 1996; 38 in 2022; 90 in 2025.
Deals got bigger, companies older
Ritter, IPO Statistics
- Median IPO proceeds rose from $37M in 1980 to $246M in 2025 (2025 dollars, Table 4f).
- Median age at IPO went from 6 years in 1980 to 12 in 2025 (Table 4).
- IPOs by companies with sales under $100M fell from 66% of deals in 1980 to 39% in 2025 (Table 12).
- Small-company IPOs averaged 165 a year in 1980 to 2000 and 28 in 2001 to 2012 (Gao, Ritter and Zhu, 2013).
- Buyout-backed IPOs: 98 in 1992, 0 in 2022, 14 in 2025 (Table 4c).
The exit door shrank while the room filled: PE assets grew more than tenfold since 2010, and the IPO market that absorbed 677 companies in 1996 took 90 in 2025.
Chapter 2
Where Have All the Public Companies Gone?
The U.S. public market today is fewer, larger companies. The count has been roughly flat since 2013.
U.S.-listed domestic firms
NYSE, Amex and Nasdaq, CRSP data
Sources: Doidge, Karolyi and Stulz (2017); Doidge, Karolyi, Shen and Stulz (2025). Ritter's narrower count of domestic operating companies peaked at 7,451 in Q2 1997 and stood at 3,657 at the end of 2025.
Why the count fell
- Fewer new listings, the IPO drought in chapter 1, plus more delistings. The largest delisting driver is mergers among public firms, then delistings for cause (Doidge, Karolyi and Stulz).
- A listing gap. Versus peer countries, the U.S. was missing 7,162 listed firms in 2023, up 32% since 2012. Listed firms per million people fell 56.7% since 1996 (Doidge, Karolyi, Shen and Stulz).
- Economics of scale. Small firms gain more by selling to a larger company than by listing (Gao, Ritter and Zhu). Abundant private capital makes staying private cheap.
- A brief SPAC bump added 864 firms from 2019 to 2021, then reversed by 2023 (Doidge, Karolyi, Shen and Stulz).
The U.S. now has 12.9 listed firms per million people, against 24.5 in other developed countries.
Chapter 3
The barbell
Why the middle of the market has only one full exit.
| Constraint | Rule or figure | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diversified fund limit | For 75% of assets: at most 5% of fund assets in one issuer and at most 10% of the issuer's voting stock | Statute | Investment Company Act s.5(b)(1) |
| Ownership disclosure | Over 5% beneficial ownership triggers Schedule 13D (5 business days since the 2023 amendments) or 13G | Rule | Exchange Act s.13(d); SEC 2023 amendments (Skadden summary) |
| Minimum position size | $100M per position | Illustrative | An illustrative assumption, not a sourced figure |
| Implied minimum company size | $100M at a 10% cap implies at least a $1B market value | Arithmetic on the illustration | Derived |
| Median IPO market value, 2025 | $1.56B at first close | Data | Ritter, Table 4f |
Read together: an illustrative large-manager floor lands near where the median IPO now prices. Companies below that line are hard for the biggest pools to own, so they stay with private funds until they are large enough to list well.
Chapter 4
The IPO tidal wave to come
Very large companies now mature privately. Most of these are venture or growth backed rather than classic buyouts; together they are the private capital giants.
The queue
Counts and values
Bar scale 0 to 1,800 companies. Global unicorns are worth $8.6T; U.S. active unicorns $5.7T. CB Insights counts 1,447 global unicorns on a different method, so provider counts are not comparable.
U.S. PE-backed inventory
Bar scale 0 to 14,000 companies. Sources: PitchBook 2024 Annual U.S. PE Breakdown; PitchBook via CBIZ, Q2 2026.
What the giants have in common
- Ten of the eleven spent more than a decade private, before listing or to date.
- Three of the eleven have listed: SpaceX, Shein and Klarna.
- Two more have reported filings: Anthropic and Discord.
- Values below are private marks or press reports unless the company is listed.
The private giants
Founding year vs years private. Bubble area tracks the latest cited value.
ListedPrivateIPO filing reported
Values: SpaceX IPO valuation (SpaceX, Reuters); OpenAI $1.25T is a reported pre-money in negotiation (Bloomberg, Oct 22, 2026), not closed; Anthropic $965B Series H (via Leverage Shares tracker). Years private = 2026, or IPO year, minus founding year.
| Company | Status | Latest cited value | Years private | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SpaceX | Public (Nasdaq: SPCX), June 2026 | $1.77T at IPO pricing; $75B raised in the base deal, $85.7B with the overallotment | 24 | SpaceX pricing and closing releases; Reuters; Nasdaq |
| OpenAI | Private; raising | $1.25T pre-money, in talks (reported) | 11+ | Bloomberg, Oct 22, 2026 |
| Anthropic | Confidential draft S-1 submitted; mid-November IPO reported | $965B Series H; IPO target of up to $2T (reported) | 5 | Anthropic; Leverage Shares; IFR |
| ByteDance | Private | $480B | 14+ | CB Insights |
| Databricks | Private | $190B | 13+ | SmartAsset; CB Insights |
| Stripe | Private; tender offers | $159B | 16+ | CB Insights |
| Revolut | Private | $75B | 11+ | CB Insights |
| Canva | Private | about $34.9B (backer markdown, Aug 2026) | 14+ | Capfinch |
| Discord | Confidential filing reported, 2026 | $15B (2021 round) | 11+ | Capfinch |
| Shein | Public (Hong Kong), Sep 2026 | $26.2B at debut | 18 | Who Brands |
| Klarna | Public (NYSE: KLAR), Sep 2025 | $15.1B at IPO | 20 | Reuters |
Signs the wave is building
- SpaceX priced the largest U.S. IPO on record at $135 a share (SpaceX; Reuters).
- Anthropic reportedly targets a mid-November listing (IFR).
- About a third of U.S. PE inventory is over six years old (CBIZ, citing PitchBook).
- IRR tends to stagnate around year seven of a hold (Bain).
Why it may not clear
- PitchBook-NVCA: SpaceX did not reopen the window; 18 VC-backed IPOs in Q3 2026.
- Value is concentrated: the top 10 unicorns hold 41.3% of unicorn value (PitchBook).
- Marks can break: Shein listed near a quarter of its 2022 private value (Who Brands).
Bain's $3.8T of unsold PE companies and $5.7T of U.S. unicorn value sit against $1.3T of buyout dry powder. Secondaries and continuation funds move assets between private owners; at this scale, broad public ownership is how assets change hands. An illustrative comparison, not a forecast.
Interactive: the backlog test
How long to clear the queue?
Start from PitchBook's U.S. PE-backed inventory. Set the pace of exits and how many new buyouts join each year. Years to clear is inventory divided by net exits. An illustrative framing model, not a forecast.
5004,000
Default: 1,501 U.S. PE exits in 2024 (PitchBook).
03,000
New buyouts entering inventory. Zero isolates the existing backlog.
8,00016,000
Default: 13,325 companies, Q1 2026 (PitchBook via CBIZ).
8.9
years to clear
Bar scale 0 to 30 years. Assumes a constant pace; real exits vary with rates and markets.
Chapter 5
Tokenization: the bridge to liquidity
The old choice was binary: buy the whole asset, or buy a slice through a company or fund that owns it. Tokenization adds a third route. A registered interest lives on a shared ledger, can be fractioned, and can trade under securities rules without a full IPO.
Whole asset
Direct ownership. Large tickets, few buyers, slow exit.
Partial interest via a vehicle
A fund, holding company or listed stock. Liquidity depends on the vehicle going public.
Tokenized interest
Fractional, recorded on a ledger, transferable within the rules. A bridge for assets stuck between private and public.
Tokenized assets today
Billions of dollars, RWA.xyz
About $39B on-chain is small next to $3.8T of unsold PE companies. The bridge exists; the traffic has not arrived.
Bar scale $0 to $40B. Sources: RWA.xyz, October 2026; private credit figures via O2O Capital citing RWA.xyz. Total distributed real-world assets about $39B (RWA.xyz).
Rules are arriving with dates
| Date | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 18, 2025 | GENIUS Act signed; effective no later than Jan 18, 2027 | Public Law 119-27 |
| Jan 28, 2026 | SEC staff: tokenized securities remain under existing securities law | SEC statement |
| Sep 17, 2026 | SEC Innovation Exemption for trading tokenized NMS stock | SEC; Sidley |
| Feb 4, 2027 | Korea's tokenized securities law takes effect | Chris Nobili, Tokenization Has a Date |
What tokenization can do
- Fractional access to assets that would never list on their own.
- The ledger as the record: issuer-sponsored tokens can form part of the master securityholder file (SEC).
- Around-the-clock settlement and programmable transfer.
Honest constraints
- Securities law still applies; a token is not an exemption.
- Transfer restrictions and accredited-investor limits keep most private tokens in narrow pools.
- Secondary liquidity is thin; most value is Treasuries and credit, not equity.
- The Innovation Exemption covers listed NMS stock, not private company shares.
A longer series on tokenization is coming.
Counterpoints
The case against the thesis
- Rates did much of the work. Holds sat in a 4.7 to 5.0 year band through 2022 and lengthened as rates rose (Private Equity Info). A rate reset could shorten them.
- Exits are recovering. 3,149 global PE exits in 2025, up 5.4% (S&P Global); 1,501 U.S. exits in 2024 (PitchBook).
- Partial liquidity exists. Continuation vehicles and GP-led secondaries return some cash, so stuck overstates it for some LPs.
- Buyers exist. $1.3T of buyout dry powder (Bain) means the issue is price as much as route.
- Rules may not be the fix. Gao, Ritter and Zhu find economies of scale, not regulation, pushed small firms away from IPOs.
Builds on Chris's earlier work
- The IPO Tidal Wave: The Great Rotation from Private to Public Capital (May 2026). This page adds the hold-period and listing-gap foundation under that rotation thesis and updates its pipeline.
- Tokenization Has a Date (Auditrol Institute, Future of Banking 2035 companion brief, October 2026). Its regulatory timeline anchors chapter 5.
- Wave 3: Crypto and Tokenization (Auditrol, April 2026), part of The Four Waves. The bank-readiness view of how tokenized private assets reach loan committees.