OPINION. “The greatest investment opportunity of our time takes place outside the stock market! »

By Thomas Rebaud, co-founder and CEO of Akka

Anthropic, OpenAI and Perplexity have reached valuations of several hundred billion dollars in just a few years, without being listed on the stock exchange. Before 2023 and the emergence of companies in AI, a start-up that became a unicorn reached this valuation of 1 billion euros in 8 years of existence on average. Since then, huge fundraisings have become earlier and the average has dropped to 3 years, with record examples like Mistral in 7 months and Mercor in 1 year.

No generation of companies had grown so quickly. This is a unique opportunity for investors, provided they access it before the IPO.

In 2023, Anthropic, the company behind Assistant Claude, was worth approximately $4 billion. In May 2026, it is worth 965: its value has multiplied by more than 200 in three years. OpenAI has followed the same path, from $29 billion at the start of 2023 to $852 billion today. While millions of people used ChatGPT every day, only a few wealthy funds and investors could buy a stake in the company.

A question then arises: why must we wait for a company to go public to be able to invest in its growth, when a considerable part of its value creation has already taken place?

Twenty years ago, a fast-growing company went public to raise the money necessary for its development. This is no longer the case: investment funds today provide billions in a single fundraising. In May 2026, Anthropic raised $65 billion without going through the stock market. There is therefore no incentive for these companies to list early, with the constraints that this implies: publishing their results every quarter and living under the permanent gaze of the markets. Investing before the IPO is not a gamble: these companies already have millions of customers, solid revenues and a dominant position. Risk has significantly decreased, and growth continues.

They therefore remain private during the phase where their turnover increases from a few million to several billion.

This is precisely the period when their value increases the fastest: with each new fundraising, investors buy shares at a higher price, which reflects the growth potential of the company. The valuation is therefore based on projections of what the company could become.

But, when the company finally enters the stock market, the market regulates these figures, we really measure the valuation of the company, we no longer judge it on projections but on what it is really worth, leading in the vast majority to a loss of valuation.

When individuals arrive, the first investors take advantage of it to sell

For the general public, the story begins on IPO day. The company is making headlines in the economic media, its shares are finally becoming accessible. This is also the first moment when its historical investors can sell easily. Before listing, reselling shares in a private company is long and complicated due to a lack of buyers.

Machine-translated from French