SpaceX, OpenAI, And Anthropic's Exit Wave Could Trigger A Private Market Repricing

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are increasingly viewed as catalysts for a potential private market repricing, with their expected IPOs forming a broader "exit wave" that could reset valuation benchmarks across late-stage venture markets. When companies worth billions of dollars move out of private indices, they don't just create liquidity—they reset the valuation benchmarks that ripple across related sectors like AI, infrastructure, and defense technology. Forge Global recently released a report detailing performance from other "baskets" in the industry, noting that private market strength is increasingly spreading beyond a handful of artificial intelligence companies. "This broadening of industry sectors suggests that private market returns are no longer concentrated in a single theme, but are instead diffusing across adjacent areas that benefit from the same underlying technological and capital allocation trends," the report stated. Read Also: Andreessen Horowitz Partner Reignites Carried Interest Debate With Call For Higher Taxes Last month, chips emerged as the strongest-performing basket, rising 6%, driven in part by Cerebras. "The need for specialized chips to enable AI and potentially diversify away from NVIDIA is a central theme in the private market," the report stated. Aerospace & defense also posted strong gains, up 3.5% in April. The move was led by Saronic's 35.2% surge, alongside steady contributions from SpaceX, 2%, and Anduril, 1.1%. The performance reflects "continued investor focus on autonomy, defense modernization, and frontier infrastructure amid the backdrop of the Middle East conflict." Through April 2026, chips had led all baskets this year with an 81.2% return, followed by Aerospace & defense 34.5% return year-to-date. Meanwhile fintech returned 16.8%, consumer at 15.4% and artificial intelligence at 14.8%. In comparison, the Forge Private Market Index rose just 0.1% in April, while the Forge Accuidity Private Market Index gained 1.2%. "Private market indexes moved higher in April, though the pace of appreciation lagged meaningfully behind public equities," the report said. At the same time, dispersion within the private market continued to widen. Buy-side indications of interest (IOIs) rose to 69% in April. "This marks the fifth month in a row that buy-side interest has increased and is now at its highest level since December 2024.” However, trade premium data suggests that demand is increasingly concentrated at the very top of the market: the 90th percentile surged to 92%, while lower quartiles declined and the median fell to -19%. In other words, capital is clustering around a small group of perceived winners rather than lifting the broader asset base. Individual company moves reinforced that pattern. Kalshi surged 102% following a reported funding round valuing the prediction market platform at $22 billion, while Cerebras' momentum continued ahead of its IPO. Together, these moves highlight how liquidity expectations and IPO readiness are becoming increasingly important drivers of private market repricing. Meanwhile, some of the largest names in the ecosystem remain in focus as potential catalysts for the next phase of the cycle. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic sit at the center of that transition—not just as standalone companies, but as benchmarks whose eventual public listings could reset valuation frameworks across AI, defense, and advanced computing. Taken together, the data points to a private market that is no longer being driven by a single dominant theme. Instead, it is becoming a more distributed ecosystem where performance is increasingly shaped by infrastructure-heavy sectors—and where the next major repricing may come not from AI hype alone, but from the moment its most prominent companies finally move into public markets. Photo: Shutterstock Read Also: BDC Exodus: Investors Pull More Cash Than They Put In For The First Time