All-In

Inside the Private Stock Market Boom: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI & the Rise of Secondaries

Jeff Pearlman (Warburg Pincus), Joseph Schuster (Epoch Investment Partners), Matt Kennedy (Renaissance Capital), Alex Kelley (Latham & Watkins)
7 Jun 2026 8 min read 23m
TL;DR

The private capital markets are experiencing a historic boom with SpaceX's $1.8T IPO, a $36B Apollo-Blackstone-Broadcom financing for Anthropic, and $240B in secondaries volume in 2025—but PE exit strategies are fragmenting as IPO markets remain structurally broken and continuation funds become the new permanent feature of the industry.

Key Moments
Jeff Pearlman, Warburg Pincus CEO
“The IPO market remains structurally broken. You know, for sponsors. And we have 60% fewer public companies today than we did ten years ago. It's really driven by passive money.”
Explaining why continuation funds will remain permanent despite euphoria about the IPO window opening.
▶ 7:34
Emily Rafaela, Bloomberg
“This is investment grade private credit deal. It's something that Mark Rowan has talked about a lot that they're trying to get more into this. You can see that the rating on the A1 and A2 tranche of this deal is investment grade. It's backstopped by Broadcom which is an IG company which gave it this IG rating.”
Describing the circular financing structure where Broadcom guarantees the debt anthropic uses to buy Broadcom chips.
▶ 12:55
Matt Kennedy, Renaissance Capital
“In order for this market cap to make any sense at all, you really need to go out to 2028, 2029, 2030. It looks like they've got a decent, uh, track record of success, but, uh, you know, really, really have to bank on those 20, 30 numbers.”
On whether SpaceX's valuation at 100x sales makes sense for an unprofitable company.
▶ 18:07
Joseph Schuster, Epoch Investment Partners
“We really have, uh, pioneered a long term thinking about IPO, which is around the four year, five year presidential cycle kind of window. And if you define this type of long period of time, you have tremendous investment opportunities coming because you deal with large IPOs, um, by default, but also IP, which can become large over time like a Tesla and sees all the interesting momentum companies such a strategy actually can get you into.”
Explaining why IPO indexing strategies focus on longer holding periods rather than day-one flips.
▶ 24:25
Alex Kelley, Latham & Watkins
“If you look at 2025, there was a $240 billion of secondary transactions, which itself was up 50% year over year. If you look at 2013, there was $26 billion. And so you're seeing a ten x increase over just about a decade.”
On how secondaries and continuation vehicles have become the dominant exit mechanism for PE, replacing traditional IPOs and strategic sales.
▶ 31:00
About the show
›
Bloomberg Deals covers major M&A transactions, IPOs, and capital markets activity shaping global finance. This episode focuses on the record-breaking private market boom, including SpaceX's $75B IPO debut, the $36B Anthropic financing deal, and the structural challenges facing PE exits in an era of mega-IPOs and continuation vehicles.
Takeaways
1
Mega IPOs create liquidity but systemic risk SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI going public at $1.8T+ valuations will force index funds to liquidate existing holdings, potentially causing cascading selloffs in smaller equities. The passive money flows that drive index inclusion create symmetrical tail risk on both upside momentum and downside crashes.
2
Continuation funds are now permanent exit strategy With 60% fewer public companies, passive investing dominance, and most levered PE assets requiring significant deleveraging to go public, secondary continuation vehicles have replaced IPOs as the primary PE exit. The $240B secondary market grew 10x since 2013, signaling structural shift in how capital recycled.
3
Circular financing replaces traditional underwriting The $36B Anthropic deal shows how chip manufacturers (Broadcom) now backstop infrastructure financing to ensure chip purchase commitments—blending debt issuance, capex funding, and supplier guarantees into single instruments. This pattern will accelerate as AI capex demands outstrip traditional credit markets.