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For most of the 20th century, the public stock market was where ambitious companies grew up. Buying their shares was how ordinary people shared in that growth.
That arrangement is being rewritten. More and more of the world’s value is now created inside private companies long before they ever ring an opening bell.
Private market investing, once a club for institutions and the wealthy, is moving into the financial mainstream.
Three forces are driving the shift:
Companies are staying private longer
Liquidity exist for investment opportunities are widening fast
Certain private-markets products are opening up to regular investors
Let’s take them one at a time.
Companies are staying private longer
Companies are increasingly remaining private through later stages of their development
Meanwhile, the public market has been shrinking.
Source: World Bank open data
A number of factors are driving this trend:
Late-stage firms have been known to raise billions privately, without the scrutiny that comes with being public. Stripe and Databricks are two examples.
Post-IPO price volatility discourages smaller companies from listing
Heavier regulatory burdens have made staying private more attractive
Maturing secondary markets let founders and employees cash out without liquidity events such as an IPO
Much of the appreciation that used to happen in plain sight now happens before companies choose to IPO.
One analysis of companies that became unicorns and then listed between 2019-25 found a median annual appreciation of roughly 66% in the window between hitting unicorn status and going public.1*
Now you can see why family offices and many institutional investors look to private markets as a component of their wider portfolios: here are a few examples of companies that spent years (even decades) building value privately before finally going public.
They represent how much room there is to grow inside private markets before an IPO ever happens:
Facebook (now Meta) is the classic example: founded in 2004, it IPO’d in May 2012. That’s only 8 years private, but it debuted at a $104 billion valuation, one of the largest tech IPOs in history at the time.2
Others wait much longer. Palantir Technologies was founded in 2003 yet didn’t go public until September 2020 via a direct listing that valued it at roughly $22 billion on debut.3
Founded in 2005, Reddit stayed private for nearly 19 years before its March 2024 IPO. The company was priced at $34 a share for a roughly $6.5 billion valuation.4
Klarna spent about 20 years private before finally going public in September 2025 at a $14 billion valuation.5
Disclosure: The companies identified above are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to represent all companies or be a generalization of any private companies individual performance.
Private market access is widening
Staying private longer used to mean ordinary investors were locked out.
Not anymore.
A real secondary market has evolved in just a few years, letting existing shareholders sell private stakes instead of waiting for liquidity events such as an IPO. ***
And that market is booming.
One forecast values the broader private securities market share-trading market to surpass $200 billion by 2034.6
Even Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, and Goldman Sachs have moved in, a potential signal that private secondaries are now a mainstream asset class.7
That’s why Republic has built on-ramps designed for everyday investors, including:
Mirror Tokens. Through affiliate entity RepublicX, Mirror Tokens let you participate in the economic exposure of some of the most well-known private companies (think companies like SpaceX and ByteDance, the parent of TikTok)** starting at just $50, available to global investors via REG S or accredited investors in the U.S. These tokens are designed to mirror a reference company’s performance and pay out only if a qualifying liquidity event (such as an IPO or acquisition) occurs.*
SPVs. A Special Purpose Vehicle is a single-purpose entity that pools investors’ money to buy into one one clear investment target. SPVs available to accredited investors through Republic have opened access to late-stage leaders like Open AI, SpaceX, Kraken, and Perplexity. And even xAI (before the acquisition).**
The doors are opening
Beyond secondaries, the entire private-markets ecosystem is expanding.
Private markets are projected to generate more than half of the global asset-management industry’s revenue by 2030, with alternative assets under management reaching roughly $34 trillion.8 North American venture capital AUM alone is expected to climb to $1.8 trillion by 2029.9
Just as important, the structures are changing.
Million-dollar minimums and 10-year lockups are being dismantled. Evergreen and “semi-liquid” funds (open-ended vehicles that take new money continuously and offer periodic redemptions) have quadrupled to around $430 billion over the past decade.10
Regulations are loosening as well:
A U.S. executive order directed the SEC and Department of Labor to build a framework for holding private assets inside 401(k)-style retirement plans11
In the UK, 17 pension providers have pledged to route at least 10% of their default funds into private markets by 203012
Tokenization adds yet another on-ramp, with tokenized fund AUM forecast to reach $715 billion by 2030.13
Center of the action
Republic is at the heart of these innovations. Two recent milestones show what it looks like in practice:
In 2025, Republic partnered with Hamilton Lane—a leading private-markets firms, with roughly $1 trillion in assets under management and supervision—to launch the Hamilton Lane Private Infrastructure Fund (HLPIF). This is a private infrastructure offering available to U.S. retail (non-accredited) investors.
Republic is tokenizing the equity of Animoca Brands, a Web3 leader with a portfolio of over 600 projects. Animoca’s shares were previously available only through opaque, illiquid over-the-counter markets. Tokenization is intended to enable secondary trading while providing a preview of where private investing is headed: real ownership, recorded on-chain, and tradable.
The picture becomes clearer when putting these three trends together: private market investing is transforming how growth gets financed and how investors share in it.
The walls are coming down and Republic wants to make sure you have the opportunity to take part.
2 Forbes
7 Secfi
8 PwC
9 CNBC
10 iCapital
11 Morningstar
12 Morningstar
13 PwC
* Past performance is not indicative of future results. This material includes forward-looking statements and third-party projections that are uncertain and may not occur. Tokens (including Mirror Tokens) are speculative and illiquid, may lose value, and may not pay out; there is no guarantee of any return or liquidity event.
** Company names are for illustrative purposes only. Mention does not imply endorsement, recommendation, or guaranteed future availability.
*** Any potential IPO is speculative, subject to market conditions and regulatory considerations, and there can be no assurance that an IPO will occur. Projected financial figures are not guaranteed and actual results may differ materially.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES
This page is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or investment product. All securities-related transactions and offerings are facilitated exclusively through applicable, properly registered affiliates, each acting in conjunction with the respective issuers of such securities.
All related securities activity is conducted by OpenDeal Broker LLC, a registered broker-dealer, Member FINRA and SIPC, and SEC registered Crowdfunding portal OpenDeal Portal LLC, both affiliates of OpenDeal Inc. Secondary market trading of digital assets and tokenized securities is offered through INX Securities, LLC, a registered broker-dealer, Member FINRA and SIPC, also an affiliate of Republic.
The entity sharing information about Mirror Tokens is RepublicX, LLC. RepublicX does not provide investment advice, analysis or recommendations and is not a registered broker-dealer, funding portal or investment adviser. Mirror Tokens are securities and are subject to applicable regulatory and jurisdictional requirements.
Private securities are highly risky and speculative. Never invest more than you can afford to lose. Consult with your trusted advisors and conduct your own diligence before investing. Not FDIC or SIPC insured.
