A16Z's David George on How Private and Public Markets Fused Into One

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

Business, News, News Commentary, Investing, Business News

4.5 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

This year could be a big one for IPOs. From Anthropic to SpaceX to OpenAI, we could see some gigantic companies hit the public market. But of course, the big story is that big, thriving companies feel less and less pressure to go public. In a different era, private giants like Databricks and Stripe might've IPO'd a long time ago. So what's changed? Why are companies comfortable staying private for so long? On this episode, we speak with David George, a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, who leads the firm's growth investing team. He discusses how private markets have grown deeper and more liquid, which greatly reduces the need for companies to have public stock at all. We also talk about how he's thinking about the AI disruption trade, and when it makes sense for these private giants to bite the bullet and expose their stock to public investors.

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1:44.7	Tracy, it feels like 2026 could be a big year for some mega IPOs that have been private for a while.
1:51.6	There's talk about a SpaceX IPO, possibly, maybe some of the big AI labs, like some pretty massive companies that might be hitting the market soon.
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