Cathie Wood says the biggest IPO opportunity comes before a company goes public, and most investors miss out on rapid growth while a company remains private.
ARK founders framed SpaceX’s record submission as the beginning of a broader late-stage pipeline. Her company has six private companies scheduled to go public, all of which have already reached public market size.
Why is a period of personal growth coming now?
According to ARK, the median time for U.S. companies to go public is 12 years, up from 5 years in 1999.
Independent numbers from University of Florida professor Jay Ritter confirm a similar long climb. He has been tracking the age of IPOs for 40 years.
Two structural changes led to faster value creation. The JOBS Act of 2012 increased the cap on the number of shareholders required to be publicly registered from 500 to 2,000. Then, with large amounts of private funding, companies can delay going public for years.
Cathie Wood named three companies that have expanded while remaining private. The ARK report states:
- OpenAI’s annual revenue will exceed $25 billion by early 2026, reaching it in about three years.
- Anthropic secretly filed for an IPO on June 1 at a valuation of $965 billion.
- Databricks is preparing its own list.
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SpaceX has filed for what could be the largest IPO in history, but ARK believes it won’t be the only one…The median IPO age for U.S. companies is now 12 years, up from 5 years in 1999. Increasingly, the greatest value is created before a company goes public, Cathie Wood wrote in the post.
Pre-IPO opportunities tracked by ARK
SpaceX has filed for a $75 billion initial public offering, making it the largest IPO in history. This goal is nearly three times Saudi Aramco’s current record sales of $25.6 billion in 2019.
The company plans to list on the Nasdaq on June 12th at $135 per share, meaning a valuation of nearly $1.77 trillion. Aramco went public for $1.7 trillion, about the same as six years ago.
ARK treats its debut as one entry in a long queue. The company said in a published guide that its venture fund holds six companies with active IPO schedules. Access via SoFi or Titan starts at $500.
SpaceX may just be the beginning.
New analysis from ARK looks at the wave of initial public offerings (IPOs) that appears to be building behind the headlines. ARK Venture Fund holds positions in six companies with active IPO schedules. Although each has reached public market size… pic.twitter.com/DoSwu6aB3r
— ARK Funds (@ARK_Funds) June 5, 2026
Readers looking to do the math can explore an extensive discussion of SpaceX’s IPO valuation and practical investment routes before going public.
What to expect next from ARK
Cathie Wood argues that venture exposure gives investors faster access to disruptive innovation than the public markets.
This paper builds on ARK’s extensive annual innovation survey, which maps growth across AI, robotics, and digital assets.
That framing also touches on cryptography. ARK’s Big Ideas 2026 report combines pre-IPO case studies with bullish predictions for Bitcoin.
