After a four-year drought, IPO talk is back. But a public listing does not mark the end of an investment journey – it is simply a change in venue. Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust backs exceptional growth companies, including six of the world’s ten most valuable private businesses. What matters is scale, ambition and execution. A listing may change ownership structure, not the opportunity.

As with any investment, your capital is at risk. 

 When market conditions shift, so does the conversation. In 2026, initial public offering (IPO) talk is back.

After years of caution, there is a tangible shift in mood – capital is moving, valuations are recovering and the appetite for new listings is returning. Speculation is building around some of the most valuable private companies ever created – SpaceX, Anthropic, Databricks and others are increasingly discussed as candidates for what could be among the most significant public market debuts in a generation.

For Scottish Mortgage shareholders, some of these names will be familiar. These are companies that we have held in our portfolio for years – businesses that have been building and compounding value on their own terms, away from daily market scrutiny. The question of whether and when they list is a natural one. But it is not the most important one.

For Scottish Mortgage, the return of IPO activity changes very little. We have always invested in exceptional growth companies. Whether those companies are public or private is a detail, not a destination – and that has never been more true than today.

IPOs Are Events, Not Objectives

IPO activity moves in waves, shaped by sentiment, liquidity and macroeconomic confidence. From a long-term investment perspective, IPOs are best understood as events – not outcomes in themselves. A listing is simply one of several paths a successful company might take; value can equally be realised through a merger, secondary transactions, or continued compounding in the private markets.

Scottish Mortgage does not invest because a company may list, nor with a fixed view on when a listing should occur. We are equally comfortable owning a business that remains private for decades as one that lists on public markets. What matters is consistent across both: the scale of the opportunity, the quality of execution and the durability of long-term value creation.

For long-term shareholders, a public listing does not mark the end of an investment journey – it is simply a change in venue. Some of Scottish Mortgage’s most successful investments over the last decade are testament to exactly that – companies like Spotify and Wise, which we have held uninterrupted on their journey from private to public and continue to own today. The same logic applies to the private companies we hold now. SpaceX, Anthropic, Databricks and Revolut, companies we have owned for years, have been generating value throughout this period, entirely independent of whether a listing was imminent. That is the point. The absence of a listing does not signal a lack of progress – great businesses are not built on market timetables, and investment returns are not dictated by listing calendars.

Understanding the Four-Year IPO Drought

The weakness in IPO markets since 2022 was not incidental – it reflected three structural forces that combined to compress activity well below historical norms.

Rising interest rates made public markets hostile to high-growth companies, widening the gap between private valuations and public market expectations. The hangover from the 2020–21 IPO boom left scar tissue – many companies that listed in that window traded down sharply, raising the bar for what investors would accept. And the growth of late-stage private capital meant companies no longer needed to list to access funding or provide liquidity.

The result has been a structurally weaker IPO market – not because innovation has slowed, but because the economic and financial incentives to list have been less compelling. The cumulative effect has been a profound backlog. The pipeline of high-quality private businesses that could plausibly list – but have not – is arguably larger today than at any point in recent history.

For Scottish Mortgage shareholders, this period has been a lived experience. With IPO markets largely frozen and private companies staying private for longer, our private allocation sat at the upper end of our permitted range for much of this period.

The companies now being discussed as IPO candidates did not appear overnight. Many have been building value at their own pace for years – and it is precisely those companies that Scottish Mortgage has been backing. Free from short-term public market pressures, these businesses have invested on a long-term horizon, compounding on their own terms.

While improving sentiment in 2026 may suggest some headwinds are easing, the past four years have shown how sensitive listing activity is to macroeconomic conditions – and why the best investment cases are never anchored to market windows.

Private Companies in 2026: A Different Reality

The mental model many investors still apply to private companies is out of date. ‘Private’ conjures early-stage, speculative, unproven. The reality in 2026 could hardly be more different.

Consider the scale of what we own in Scottish Mortgage. Our private holdings dwarf many of the FTSE 100’s largest names – and we currently own six of the world’s ten most valuable private companies.

• SpaceX has operated for over two decades, has launched more rockets than any government programme in history, and is building the infrastructure for both global satellite communications and the next era of space exploration.
• ByteDance operates at a scale – in users, revenue and global reach – that rivals the largest public technology companies on earth.
• Anthropic is at the frontier of AI research, developing systems that are reshaping how businesses and individuals interact with technology.
• Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars in payments annually and provides the financial backbone for a significant portion of global internet commerce.
• Databricks serves thousands of enterprises worldwide as their platform of choice for data and AI.
•  Revolut has built what traditional banks spent decades failing to – a single app for banking, payments, trading and more, now trusted by tens of millions of customers worldwide.

These are not emerging businesses. They are operationally mature, globally scaled companies with proven revenue models, deep customer relationships and the kind of competitive positioning that takes years to build. The fact that they are private is not a caveat – it is a choice. They remain private because they can, not because they must.

For Scottish Mortgage, this is the deliberate result of a consistent philosophy: identify exceptional companies early, back them with conviction, and hold them patiently as they grow. The private exposure in the portfolio today is not a tactical allocation or a bet on an IPO cycle. It is what patient, long-term investing looks like in practice.

What an IPO Changes, and What It Doesn’t

A public listing undoubtedly brings change. It introduces daily price movements, new disclosure requirements, a broader and more diverse investor base – these are not trivial. They shape how a company is discussed, scrutinised and valued in the short term.

But they do not touch what matters most. A listing does not alter the size of the market a company is pursuing, the strength of its technology, the quality of its leadership, or the long-term ambition of its founders. The fundamentals that made a business compelling before it listed are the same fundamentals that drive value creation after.

Amazon is perhaps the clearest illustration. For years after its IPO, it was misunderstood, undervalued and written off by investors focused on near-term profitability. The listing changed its ownership structure – it did not change the scale of what Jeff Bezos was building. The same logic applies today to the private companies we hold. SpaceX will not be a different business the day it lists. Stripe will not become more or less formidable because it has a public ticker.

For Scottish Mortgage, a listing does not trigger an automatic reassessment of a company’s worth, nor a requirement to sell. We are as comfortable holding companies through ownership transitions as we are holding them through periods of market volatility. What we are focused on has never changed – the long-term trajectory of exceptional businesses, wherever they happen to trade.

Staying Grounded Amid the Noise

Let us be clear about what Scottish Mortgage’s private company exposure represents.

• It is not a target allocation.
• It is not a thematic position.
• It is not an attempt to anticipate market fashions.

It is the natural outcome of a simple discipline: identifying exceptional businesses early and giving them the time they need to fulfil their potential. Some remain private for long periods. Others list and continue compounding in public markets. In both cases, our role is the same – patient capital, focused on long-term outcomes.

IPO cycles will come and go, as they always have. Periods of enthusiasm will be followed by periods of caution. Through all of it, our philosophy remains steady. We do not invest for IPO listings. We do not invest against them. We invest in exceptional growth companies – and we hold them with conviction through whatever ownership structure they inhabit.

What lies ahead is genuinely exciting. The companies at the centre of this conversation – businesses we have backed patiently through years of quiet compounding – are entering a period where their scale, ambition and impact will become visible to a far wider audience. For Scottish Mortgage shareholders, that is not the beginning of the story. It is the next chapter of one already well underway.

As market sentiment shifts and the boundary between public and private markets comes back into focus, we believe the most important distinction lies elsewhere – between short-term narratives and long-term value creation. That has always been our focus.

IPO talk may indeed be back. But our investment horizon never left.

About the author – Claire Shaw

Portfolio Director

Claire Shaw is a portfolio director and plays a prominent role in servicing Scottish Mortgage’s UK shareholder base. Before joining in 2019, she spent over a decade as a fund manager with a focus on managing European equity portfolios for a global client base. With a background in analysing companies and communicating investment ideas, Claire is also responsible for creating engaging content that makes the Scottish Mortgage portfolio accessible to all its shareholders. Beyond that, she works closely with the managers, meeting with portfolio companies and conducting in-depth portfolio discussions with shareholders.

Important information

This article does not constitute, and is not subject to the protections afforded to, independent research. Baillie Gifford and its staff may have dealt in the investments concerned. The views expressed are not statements of fact and should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment.

Unlisted investments such as private companies, in which the Trust has a significant investment, can increase risk. These assets may be more difficult to sell, so changes in their prices may be greater. Baillie Gifford & Co and Baillie Gifford & Co Limited are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The investment trusts managed by Baillie Gifford & Co Limited are listed on the London Stock Exchange and are not authorised or regulated by the FCA. A Key Information Document is available at bailliegifford.com.