The biggest AI wealth transfer in history already happened, and if you're in public markets, you weren't invited.
The Summary
- SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are preparing IPOs, but Baillie Gifford's Peter Singlehurst says public investors already missed the growth that mattered
- The companies driving Web4 stayed private longer than any generation before them, capturing value in closed markets
- By the time retail gets access, the exponential growth curve is already behind us
The Signal
This isn't news. It's a postmortem. When OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX finally go public, they'll arrive as mature companies with valuations that already reflect years of the growth curve public investors used to capture.
Baillie Gifford's private companies team has watched this play out firsthand. Singlehurst's point is blunt: the AI boom happened in conference rooms most investors couldn't access. OpenAI went from research lab to $100B+ valuation without a single public shareholder. Anthropic raised billions while regular investors watched from the sidelines. SpaceX built a launch monopoly and a satellite internet business as a private company.
"Public market investors have already missed out on a lot of growth."
The pattern is structural. Tech companies now stay private through their hypergrowth phase because they can. Venture capital evolved into growth equity. Growth equity became late-stage private markets. Tiger Global, SoftBank, sovereign wealth funds, they all poured capital into keeping these companies private longer. Why go public at $1B when you can raise at $50B and keep control?
For the agent economy, this matters beyond just who got rich. The companies building Web4 infrastructure, the ones training frontier models, the ones figuring out how agents transact and coordinate, they're all following the same playbook:
- Raise massive private rounds at eye-watering valuations
- Use that capital to build moats before competitors get funded
- Go public only when growth rates normalize or you need an exit for early investors
The Implication
If you're building in this space, understand the game. Public markets aren't where AI companies get built anymore. They're where they get traded after the value is created. That changes everything about capital allocation, who wins, and where the next generation of infrastructure gets funded.
Watch what happens when these IPOs land. If they pop, it tells you public markets are still hungry and dumb money is chasing names. If they trade flat or down, it confirms Singlehurst's thesis: we're late, and the smart money already knows it.