"It's a remarkable state of affairs when you consider that as recently as August 2018, the planet's most valuable startup was Uber, with a measly $76 billion valuation, and there were exactly zero public companies with trillion-dollar market caps. Apple was the first to grab the trillion-dollar ring in August 2018 (on Tuesday, the iPhone maker's market cap reached $4 trillion), and Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Tesla have since followed suit."
"So, assuming a trillion-dollar privately-held startup really is just a matter of time, there are a number of questions that we probably need to start asking, including what it means for the exit-based VC model and for founders, what it means for public-company focused regulation and disclosure rules (especially given efforts to open retirement plans to private assets), and of course, what the heck do we even call these things?"
""Calling a trillion dollar company a 'startup' is an exercise in branding," she said via email. "It is a way for founders to keep the innovation narrative." Goldberg also adds that the total valuation of the companies on Bessemer's Cloud 100 list has grown by 10x over the last decade. Soon, she says, "the average private valuation will be $112 billion.""
Trillion-dollar privately held companies are becoming conceivable as private valuations soar, exemplified by OpenAI's reported $500 billion valuation. The landscape has shifted since 2018 when Uber led with $76 billion and no public company reached a trillion; several tech giants later surpassed that mark. A trillion-dollar private company would strain the traditional exit-based VC model, raise questions about disclosure and regulation for public-company–scale firms, and complicate retirement-plan access to private assets. Labeling such firms 'startups' often serves branding and narrative purposes. Private valuations, like those on Bessemer's Cloud 100, have grown roughly tenfold over the past decade.
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