ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
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Chamath @ 00:59:30Inconclusive
marketsventure
In the coming years, the existing U.S. IPO process will be significantly restructured or supplemented by new mechanisms for private companies to access public-market capital, as the current IPO system is unsustainably limiting given the backlog of private companies.
there's going to be another turn on what happens on the IPO markets, because you can't have so many companies waiting with very, very few ways of accessing public market capital and exposure. I just think this is that is that is fundamentally broken. And we're going to have to reinvent. We tried once with SPACs. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board and try again.View on YouTube
Explanation

As of 30 Nov 2025, there has not yet been a clear, widely adopted new mechanism that fundamentally “reinvents” or substantially restructures the U.S. IPO process, but the prediction explicitly refers to changes happening over the “coming years,” which extends beyond the ~14 months since the podcast.

Key points:

  • The main ways U.S. companies access public-market capital remain traditional underwritten IPOs, direct listings (with or without a capital raise), SPACs/de‑SPACs, and reverse mergers—all of which existed before September 2024.

    • Nasdaq’s Direct Listing with Capital Raise (DLCR), which allows companies to both list and raise primary capital in the opening auction, was approved by the SEC in December 2022, well before the podcast, and is still framed as an incremental alternative rather than a replacement for the IPO process. (nasdaq.com)
    • Legal and practitioner guides in 2024–25 still describe the landscape as a menu of IPO, SPAC, direct listing, and reverse-merger options—"evolving" but not fundamentally re‑architected. (finsyn.com)

  • Empirically, the backlog / bottleneck problem that Chamath is reacting to has not been resolved:

    • Reports in 2024–25 note that the number of U.S. public companies remains far below late‑1990s levels, even after a rebound in IPO volume, and many large firms (e.g., major tech names) continue to stay private longer. (barrons.com)
    • Private equity is still sitting on a very large overhang of unsold assets (roughly $1 trillion as of mid‑2025), with exits via IPOs and M&A constrained—evidence that no new, scalable exit channel has yet unlocked the backlog. (reuters.com)

  • Regulatory signals point toward potential future changes but not a completed “reinvention” yet:

    • In 2025, SEC leadership has emphasized making public listings easier and is exploring rules for blockchain-based issuance and trading of securities, but these are early-stage regulatory directions rather than an already-implemented structural overhaul of the IPO mechanism. (barrons.com)

Given this, we can say:

  • The conditions Chamath describes (too many private companies, constrained public-market access) still largely exist.
  • The existing IPO process has not yet been clearly “reinvented” or supplemented by a genuinely new, widely used mechanism beyond the pre‑2024 toolkit (IPO, SPAC, direct listing, reverse merger, etc.).
  • However, because his timeline is “in the coming years” and regulators/markets are visibly working on incremental reforms and potential new structures, it is too early to declare his prediction definitively right or wrong.

Therefore, the fairest evaluation as of Nov 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than “right” or “wrong.”