It took Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) nearly two decades to reach a $100 billion valuation. xAI did it in just 2.3 years.
The stark difference highlights how quickly the biggest artificial intelligence companies are scaling and how much capital investors are willing to pour into them before they ever reach the public markets.
According to a new report from Forge Global, xAI reached the $100 billion valuation milestone faster than any other company in its dataset. Anthropic followed in 4.5 years, while OpenAI reached the mark in 8.3 years.
By comparison, Stripe took 11.9 years, Databricks took 12.3 years, and SpaceX took 19.6 years. Waymo took 17.1 years.
The trend represents a major shift in the private market, where $10 billion was once considered an extraordinary valuation and $100 billion was virtually unheard of.
Forge said the change is being driven by two forces: technology and capital. AI companies can reach "meaningful revenue, user adoption and strategic relevance faster than previous generations of technology companies," the report stated. At the same time, the pool of investors willing to finance them has expanded beyond traditional venture capital to include sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, corporate investors and crossover funds.
That combination is allowing companies to raise enormous sums at increasingly high valuations earlier in their lifecycles.
The IPO May No Longer Be the Big Payoff
The surge in private valuations is also changing the role of the initial public offering. Historically, an IPO was viewed as a major value-creation event for early investors. But companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks and Stripe have already generated significant valuation gains while remaining private.
That could mean public-market investors are increasingly entering the story after much of the appreciation has already taken place.
Forge said an eventual IPO for companies such as Anthropic or OpenAI could still rank among the most significant listings in history, but the listing itself may function more as a liquidity event than the moment when the biggest gains are made.
In July, the median secondary transaction on Forge traded at a 7% discount to the last primary funding round. That was weaker than June, when the median traded at par, but significantly better than the roughly 50% discounts seen during the market downturn in late 2022 and 2023.
The resilience in secondary pricing suggests investors are increasingly willing to underwrite growth rather than demand steep discounts simply to transact. The firm noted that private-market valuations are becoming more responsive to company-specific catalysts as secondary transactions and other liquidity mechanisms create more frequent opportunities for price discovery.
Private-market performance was also strong. Forge’s Private Market Index (FPMI) gained 9.3% in July and was up 99.3% over the past year.
Still, the gains were not evenly distributed. SambaNova Systems jumped 142.9% in July after completing the first close of a $1 billion financing at an $11 billion valuation, while Neuralink gained 98.4%. Forge said the broader gains reflected a diverse group of private companies rather than the concentrated AI trade that has recently shaped public markets.
The divergence between private and public markets was particularly notable. Forge’s index, which includes post-IPO exposure, fell 4.2%, dragged down by a 36.6% decline in SpaceX. The report said the contrast highlights how private-market valuations are increasingly being driven by individual company fundamentals and catalysts, while newly public companies continue to face greater scrutiny from investors.
For private companies, however, the race to $100 billion appears to be accelerating — and xAI’s 2.3-year sprint may be a sign of just how quickly the next generation of technology giants can scale.
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