Research

This week The Information reported that Cerebras Systems, the Silicon Valley chip designer built around its wafer-scale computing architecture, has confidentially refiled for a U.S. IPO that could come as soon as April 2026.

For decades, the IPO defined liquidity — the moment value crystallized. That model is outdated. Today, a growing share of enterprise value is created — and priced — in private markets through structured tenders and secondary transactions. Liquidity is no longer binary. It is engineered. This shift is structural, not cyclical. And it is changing where — and when — investors access growth.

A growing share of today’s most important technology companies are staying private far longer than prior generations, even as they reach massive scale. That shift is reshaping how value is created, how liquidity emerges, and when investors are able to participate.

This research report explains how a structural shift in public markets has changed where small-cap growth occurs. Over the past 25 years, companies have stayed private far longer—moving from an average IPO age of roughly 4 years in 1999 to approximately 14 years today—which has diverted many high-quality growth companies away from the Russell 2000 and directly into large-cap indices or kept them private entirely. As a result, the Russell 2000 now contains a materially higher