That's because, unlike prior tech booms, VCs aren't at the center of this one. Rather, the biggest companies in the industry — Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Nvidia — have been pouring in billions of dollars to fuel the growth of capital-intensive companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale AI and CoreWeave.
With some of the most well-capitalized companies on the planet flinging open their wallets to fund the generative AI craze, the normal pressures to go public don't apply. And even if they did, this batch of startups is nowhere near showing off the profitability metrics that public investors need to see before taking the plunge.