Analysis
Pulse's funding tracker counts $257.4 billion in venture and growth-stage deals across 536 rounds over the past 21 weeks, according to Pulse's funding tracker.
This week's two largest disclosed IPO pricings, by contrast, totaled just $830 million combined between Strive and City Therapeutics' offerings (a third, smaller biotech pricing from Iambic Therapeutics landed in the same stretch) -- a figure that's a rounding error next to the private capital still flowing in.
## Where all that private money is going instead The gap isn't a sign the IPO market is closed; smaller, auditable deals like Strive and City Therapeutics are pricing and even popping on debut. It's a sign that the biggest private companies are choosing to stay private and keep raising rather than test public markets yet -- the same megadeal-heavy pattern Pulse has flagged in its own funding tracker analysis.
“For founders and GPs, the practical read is that an IPO exit on a normal timeline is less certain than the funding numbers alone suggest.”
That choice has a cost investors are only now pricing in. Firmus Grid tried to cross over at a $30 billion valuation and found that public investors apply a different standard than private backers did -- it withdrew after delivering only 46 of a promised 912 megawatts, a shortfall private investors had tolerated through several funding rounds.
For founders and GPs, the practical read is that an IPO exit on a normal timeline is less certain than the funding numbers alone suggest. A company can raise freely in the private market covered by Pulse's tracker for years longer than it used to, right up until public investors -- who don't extend the same patience for undelivered capacity -- get a vote.
That's a planning problem as much as a market one: funds modeling DPI off an IPO exit within a standard five-to-seven-year window should treat 2026's private-to-public conversion rate, not its headline funding totals, as the number that actually governs their timeline. A tracker showing hundreds of billions in annual deal flow says nothing about when, or whether, any single portfolio company actually converts that capital into a liquidity event.
