The typical U.S. company that goes public is older than it used to be, and far fewer companies go public at all. A larger share of company-building, when it occurs, now takes place in the private markets. That is a statement about where growth happens. It is not a statement that private shares are a better investment, or that a company will list.
The listing clock has moved
Jay R. Ritter's long-running U.S. IPO series at the University of Florida, covering 9,343 operating-company offerings from 1980 to 2025 after standard exclusions, shows a higher median age at listing in the decades after 2000 than in the 1980s. Median age, defined as the calendar year of the IPO minus the calendar year of founding, was 8 years in 1980-89, across 2,047 IPOs, and 11 years in 2001-25, across 2,824 IPOs. In 2024 the median age was 14 years (72 IPOs); in 2025 it was 12 years (90 IPOs) [1].
The listing door narrowed
The number of listings has also fallen. The same table records 677 operating-company IPOs in 1996, against 72 in 2024 and 90 in 2025 [1]. The stock of listed firms moved in the same direction. Ritter's companion series, drawn from CRSP, shows that domestic operating companies listed on Nasdaq and the NYSE peaked at 7,451 at the end of the second quarter of 1997, fell by more than half to 3,631 at the end of the first quarter of 2013, and stood at 3,657 at the end of 2025 [2].
What that means, and what it does not
A larger share of company-building now takes place privately: in primary funding rounds, in sales by employees and early investors, and under private-equity ownership. An investor who holds only public equities is, as a matter of market structure, arriving later in the life of many companies than an investor in an earlier era would have done.
That is not a reason to treat a private share as a better investment, and it is not a reason to assume that a company will list or will list at a higher value. Many private companies stall, fail, or never go public. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warns that a company may never list and that a market for the shares may never develop [3]. FINRA notes that many pre-IPO opportunities involving well-known private companies are not direct purchases of company stock, and that the investor may sit several layers away from the actual shares [4]. Price, share rights, transfer restrictions and the identity of the seller all have to be examined. A famous name is not a substitute for that work.
Access to the earlier period is a private-market function
Exposure to the period before a listing, when it is available at all, is not a function of a brokerage account. It is offered privately, to investors who meet eligibility tests, with limited information and limited ability to sell. Evaluating a private company is an owner's and an acquirer's problem: the quality of the business, the price, the rights attached to the shares, and the path to an exit, including the possibility that there is no exit for a long time, or at all. For an investor outside the United States it is also a cross-border problem, taken up in Crossing Borders into U.S. Private Markets.
That evaluation is a research discipline, not a do-it-yourself subscription to a future listing. It calls for a specialist partner who can read the business as an owner or an acquirer would, and who can work across borders and in the languages of the investor and of the market.
Key takeaways
- On Ritter's data, U.S. companies that list are older than they were in the 1980s, and far fewer companies list than in the mid-1990s. The number of listed domestic operating companies is just under half its 1997 peak.
- More of a company's growth, if it happens, can therefore take place off the public markets. That is a statement about location, not about investment quality.
- A company may never list. Information is limited, transfers are restricted, and some offers are several layers removed from the shares, or are fraudulent. Capital can be lost.
- Evaluating a private-company interest is an owner's problem, and a cross-border one for investors outside the United States.
Sources
- Jay R. Ritter, University of Florida, Initial Public Offerings: Median Age of IPOs Through 2025, Table 4, updated 24 December 2025
- Jay R. Ritter, University of Florida, The Number of Operating Companies Listed on Nasdaq and the NYSE, 1980-2025
- U.S. SEC, Investor.gov, Pre-IPO Investment Scams: Investor Alert
- FINRA, Know the Risks of Pre-IPO Funds and Potential Fraud
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