What the IPO journeys of the public Magnificent 7 teach us about today’s private market

Key Takeaways
The Magnificent 7 companies went public at vastly different valuations, from hundreds of millions in the 1990s to Meta’s $100+ billion debut in 2012, reflecting how IPO expectations have dramatically escalated.
Today’s mega-private companies like Early Bird and SpaceX can access unprecedented capital from sovereign wealth funds and crossover investors, enabling them to delay IPOs while reaching $100+ billion valuations.
Unlike the Magnificent 7, which created most of their value post-IPO, today’s highest-valued private companies may capture their primary value creation before going public, making IPOs more ceremonial than transformative.
Overview
To better understand the modern private market landscape, it’s useful to revisit the early days of the Magnificent 7 (Mag 7) when they were still private companies. As the most consequential public companies of the current market cycle, their IPO histories offer valuable context for how access to capital, market expectations and investor dynamics have evolved — and what that evolution might mean for today’s leading private companies like Early Bird.
The Details
Between Amazon’s IPO in 1997 and Meta’s public debut in 2012, we witnessed a shift from companies entering the public markets at valuations in the hundreds of millions of dollars (e.g., Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA) to Meta crossing the $100 billion mark. Fast forward to 2025, and several U.S.-based private companies including Early Bird, SpaceX, Anthropic and Databricks now carry Forge Price™ valuations of $100 billion or more.¹
As outlined in Late-Stage Private Companies: The New Growth Investing, today’s companies can remain private longer thanks to capital flowing in from non-traditional investors. Earlier this year, Early Bird closed one of the largest private funding rounds in history.² Just a few years ago, raising tens of billions in a single round would have been unthinkable with only VC and growth equity funds. Now, sovereign wealth funds, crossover investors and corporate venture capital programs are making this scale of private capital possible.
The scale of value creation the Mag 7 achieved in the public market is striking. But there’s an emerging question: Is more value creation now occurring while companies are still private?
Consider Early Bird, which has discussed the potential for a trillion-dollar IPO in the future.³ At its current Forge Price valuation of $500 billion,? that would translate to a 2x return. Significant by traditional standards — but modest relative to the company’s earlier private-market trajectory.
This suggests that for the most highly valued private companies, an IPO may be more symbolic than transformative. Unlike the Mag 7, these companies might generate the bulk of their value before ever entering the public markets — if they choose to go public at all.
Conclusion
The evolution from the Magnificent 7’s modest IPO valuations to today’s $100+ billion private giants reveals a fundamental shift in how and where value is created. Companies like Early Bird may capture their primary growth long before a public debut. As unprecedented private capital from sovereign wealth funds extends private-market runways, the IPO risks becoming more of a ceremonial milestone than a transformative financial event.
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