The US IPO market was supposed to be showing signs of life again.
Instead, one of the week’s bigger planned listings has been pulled from the calendar.
Bamboo Insurance Services postponed its planned $700 million IPO, citing market conditions. The move comes just days after Holtec Nuclear suspended its own $900 million offering, adding another layer of uncertainty to what had looked like a stronger year for new listings.
And Bamboo is not the only story worth watching.
Behind the IPO headlines, AI infrastructure companies are attracting enormous private-market valuations, Nvidia is putting significant capital behind one of its customers, and companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are taking longer routes toward potential public listings.
The bigger question is becoming harder to ignore:
Are private markets getting stronger, or are investors simply becoming more selective about where they are willing to put their money?
Bamboo’s $700 Million IPO Is On Hold
Bamboo Insurance, a Utah-based homeowners insurer backed by CVC, had planned to list on the New York Stock Exchange.
The proposed offering involved 35 million shares being sold by existing shareholders at an expected price of $18 to $20 a share.
At the top of the range, that would have meant:
- $700 million raised for existing shareholders
- A valuation of roughly $3.13 billion
- J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley leading the offering
But the company postponed the deal Tuesday night, pointing to market conditions.
That detail matters.
This wasn’t a company raising fresh capital to fund expansion. The IPO was primarily designed to give existing shareholders liquidity.
That makes the decision to postpone particularly interesting because it suggests the issue may not simply be about Bamboo’s underlying business.
It may be about what public-market investors are willing to pay right now.
The IPO Window Isn’t Wide Open Yet
Bamboo’s decision came shortly after Holtec Nuclear suspended its planned $900 million IPO.
That makes two sizable deals pulled from the calendar in less than a week.
There is another important data point.
Orion180, a specialty homeowners and flood insurer, completed its IPO last week but has continued trading below its offer price.
And according to the source, five of the ten largest US IPOs of 2026 are now trading below their pricing levels.
That is happening despite 2026 producing the strongest US new-issue volume since 2021.
So there is a distinction worth making:
More IPOs does not automatically mean stronger IPO demand.
Companies can return to the public market, but investors still decide whether those deals deserve to trade at the proposed valuation.
For private shareholders waiting for an exit, that creates a very different environment from simply having a crowded IPO calendar.
Interest Rates Are Adding Pressure
There is another piece of the puzzle: the bond market.
The 10-year Treasury yield closed above 5% this week, while the 30-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since 2004.
Higher yields can make investors more demanding when evaluating riskier assets.
If investors can earn more from relatively safer fixed-income assets, a new IPO has to offer a compelling enough opportunity to justify taking on additional uncertainty.
That can affect:
- IPO valuations
- investor demand
- growth-stock multiples
- financing costs
- exit expectations for private companies
For companies preparing to go public, the message is straightforward.
Being ready to list doesn’t mean the market is ready to pay your price.
Then There’s Nscale
While Bamboo is postponing its IPO, another company is moving toward the public markets with a very different story.
Nscale, a London-based AI data-center developer, is reportedly targeting a valuation of around $35 billion for its planned NYSE listing.
But its prospectus contained a major warning.
Management had previously disclosed “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern before a September 15 capital commitment from Nvidia.
That is a serious disclosure.
Nscale reported:
- $1.02 billion loss in the six months to June 30
- $140.6 million revenue during the same period
- $103 billion contract backlog as of August 31
However, around 85% of that backlog is concentrated with Microsoft and Anthropic, and much of it was described as not yet firm.
That makes the Nscale story much more complicated than a simple AI growth story.
Nvidia Isn’t Just Selling Chips
Nvidia’s relationship with Nscale is particularly interesting.
The chipmaker committed $1 billion through convertible notes or non-voting shares.
It also purchased roughly $60 million of warrants and guaranteed up to $860.3 million of Nscale’s lease obligations at a Texas facility.
In other words, Nvidia is doing more than supplying chips.
It is also helping finance a customer that buys those chips.
That raises an important question for public-market investors:
How should investors value an AI infrastructure company when its growth, financing and customer relationships are closely connected to major players in the same ecosystem?
Nscale’s situation isn’t identical to CoreWeave or other AI infrastructure companies, but the broader issue is familiar.
AI infrastructure requires enormous amounts of capital.
And companies building that infrastructure may need strategic relationships with the very companies benefiting from the AI boom.
Private AI Valuations Are Going in the Other Direction
Here is where the story gets particularly interesting.
While some companies are struggling to get public investors comfortable with their valuations, private AI companies are reportedly seeing valuations climb sharply.
Modal Labs
Modal Labs is reportedly discussing a new funding round at close to $15 billion.
Its previous valuation was reported at $4.65 billion in May.
Baseten
Baseten is reportedly discussing a valuation of around $26 billion, compared with $13 billion in June.
TypeSafe
AI coding-tools startup TypeSafe is reportedly discussing a valuation above $10 billion, just a week after announcing a $40 million seed round that PitchBook valued at around $200 million.
If the reported valuation discussions materialize, that would represent an extraordinary jump.
But there is an important caveat:
These rounds have not closed.
Reported private-market valuations are not the same thing as completed transactions, and they should not automatically be treated as reliable marks for what a company is worth.
The AI Infrastructure Trade Is Getting Bigger
There is a reason investors are willing to entertain these valuations.
AI is moving beyond the model-building race.
A huge part of the opportunity is now about running those models in the real world.
That means infrastructure for:
- AI inference
- Data centers
- Model deployment
- Computing capacity
- Training data
- Security
- AI-powered applications
The source notes that inference accounts for roughly two-thirds of AI compute demand, according to Sacra.
That helps explain why companies such as Modal Labs and Baseten are attracting attention even though they aren’t themselves building frontier AI models.
The infrastructure around AI may become just as important as the models.
Anthropic Is Getting Bigger Before Going Public
Anthropic is another company showing just how much capital is flowing into the private AI ecosystem.
The company signed an $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud-services deal with Akamai.
The agreement also includes warrants giving Akamai the right to buy shares.
Akamai’s stock jumped roughly 20% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
At the same time, Anthropic is reportedly considering a Palantir-style voting structure ahead of a potential IPO.
Under the reported structure, its seven co-founders could hold 50.1% of voting power on most matters, provided certain ownership conditions are met.
The reported valuation being discussed has also climbed significantly, with a figure as high as $2 trillion cited in the source.
But again, these are reported discussions rather than a completed public-market transaction.
OpenAI Is Taking Its Own Route
OpenAI is also reportedly pushing its potential IPO timeline beyond 2026.
That is important for private-market investors because the longer some of the biggest AI companies remain private, the longer investors in secondary markets have to wait for a traditional liquidity event.
It also changes how private shareholders think about valuation.
If a company isn’t going public soon, secondary transactions can become an increasingly important way for existing shareholders and employees to achieve liquidity.
That helps explain why the private-market valuations of companies such as Databricks and Stripe remain closely watched.
Private Markets Are Becoming a Liquidity Game
Databricks and Stripe offer an interesting contrast.
The source reports that Forge’s posted price for Databricks implied a valuation of around $201.6 billion, above the $190 billion valuation from the company’s August primary round.
Stripe’s Forge price implied around $184.4 billion, above the $159 billion mark from its February tender offer.
These numbers highlight something important about today’s private markets.
A company doesn’t need to IPO immediately for investors to keep trading around its valuation.
Secondary markets can provide another source of liquidity.
But those prices should still be treated carefully.
Private-company shares can have limited trading activity, different rights and restrictions, and far less pricing transparency than publicly traded stocks.
A quoted secondary valuation isn’t necessarily the same thing as a price at which every shareholder could immediately sell.
The Funding Market Is Still Very Much Open
Despite the IPO uncertainty, private funding activity remains strong.
Some notable rounds highlighted in the source include:
- Tekever: $580 million Series D at a $6.4 billion valuation
- Cyera: $400 million at a valuation above $12 billion
- Snorkel AI: $350 million Series E at a $3.5 billion valuation
- Heidi Health: $340 million Series C at a $900 million valuation
- Enveda: $311 million Series E at roughly $2 billion
- Hubble Network: $200 million at a $1.6 billion valuation
The common thread isn’t simply AI.
It is capital flowing toward companies tied to major technology trends, including AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, healthcare AI, drug discovery and satellite connectivity.
So it would be wrong to describe the current market as simply “risk-off.”
There is still plenty of appetite for growth.
The more accurate description may be:
Investors are willing to take risk, but they are becoming increasingly selective about where and at what valuation.
Bessemer Is Betting on Companies Staying Private Longer
One of the clearest signals comes from venture capital.
Bessemer Venture Partners raised $5.75 billion, its largest fundraise to date, with $4 billion earmarked for growth-stage investing.
The firm’s partner Byron Deeter described companies staying private longer as a permanent structural shift rather than simply a temporary market cycle.
That changes the venture-capital model.
If companies remain private for longer, investors need more capital to support them through later stages.
It also means the traditional path of:
Seed → Growth → IPO
is becoming less predictable.
Companies can now raise enormous private rounds, build substantial scale, create secondary liquidity and delay the public offering until market conditions become more attractive.
Why Bamboo Matters More Than It Seems
At first glance, Bamboo postponing a $700 million IPO might look like a single company making a cautious decision.
But put it next to everything else happening and the picture becomes more interesting.
You have:
Bamboo postponing its IPO.
Holtec suspending its IPO.
Orion180 trading below its offer price.
Nscale preparing to go public despite substantial losses and a prior going-concern warning.
Modal Labs and Baseten reportedly discussing dramatically higher private valuations.
Anthropic and OpenAI potentially delaying their IPO timelines.
Bessemer raising billions to back companies that may stay private longer.
These aren’t identical situations.
But together, they point toward a market where private and public valuations are being tested in very different ways.
The Big Question for Investors
The most important question isn’t whether AI valuations are high.
They clearly are in many cases.
The bigger question is where the market is willing to validate those valuations.
Private investors may accept aggressive growth assumptions when they believe the next financing round will happen at a higher valuation.
Public investors have a different set of considerations.
They can sell immediately.
They see quarterly financial statements.
They compare companies every day.
And when interest rates are high, the opportunity cost of owning a speculative growth stock becomes more visible.
That creates a very different test.
Private markets can price the future. Public markets eventually have to price the present.
What We’re Watching Next
There are several developments worth keeping an eye on.
Oura’s IPO
Oura’s roadshow is underway, with trading expected to begin next week. Its eventual pricing could provide another indication of investor appetite for new listings.
Nscale’s Roadshow
Investors will have to weigh Nscale’s huge AI opportunity against its losses, financing requirements and concentrated customer base.
Modal Labs and Baseten
The key question is whether their reported funding discussions actually close at the valuations being discussed.
Anthropic and OpenAI
Any further movement in their IPO plans could have implications across the secondary private market.
SpaceX
The first full orbital attempt for Starship is another major technology event investors will be watching closely.
The Bottom Line
The private-market story right now isn’t simply about a boom or a bust.
It is about two markets moving at different speeds.
Private AI companies are attracting enormous funding rounds and increasingly ambitious valuations. Venture firms are raising bigger pools of capital to support companies that may remain private for years longer.
At the same time, the public markets are demanding more evidence.
Bamboo’s decision to postpone its $700 million IPO is a useful reminder that access to the public market is not guaranteed just because investor enthusiasm exists somewhere else.
The real test comes when a valuation has to face public investors, higher yields and daily price discovery.
And that may be the defining question for the next phase of the market:
How many of today’s private-market valuations can survive the transition to the public markets?