Philippe Laffont, founder and portfolio manager of Coatue Management, speaks during CNBC’s Delivering Alpha event in New York City on Nov. 13, 2025.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Hedge fund manager Philippe Laffont sounded a stark warning about the state of the U.S. IPO market, arguing that the ecosystem for taking companies public has deteriorated significantly.
Coatue Management’s founder and portfolio manager said the market today bears little resemblance to the vibrant IPO pipeline of prior decades.
“The IPO market is completely broken … beyond repair,” Laffont said Thursday at the CNBC Delivering Alpha conference. “Twenty or 30 years ago, there were so many more IPOs than today. There’s very few IPOs … there’s almost none.”
He said it could be a problem for everyday investors, who increasingly find themselves shut out of high-growth companies until valuations are already steep.
“I think it’s not a great trend because at the end of the day, it’s just easier for retail investors to be involved in IPOs, and then onwards, than everything before the IPO,” said Laffont, whose fund manages roughly $70 billion in assets, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. “So I find that it’s a bit unfair.”
The number of U.S. IPOs has fallen sharply in recent years as companies opt to stay private longer. Market volatility, higher interest rates and regulatory scrutiny have also chilled risk appetite among both issuers and underwriters.
Bill Ford, General Atlantic Chairman and CEO, however, said he’s more optimistic about the IPO market, even as the government shutdown affected the momentum.
There have been 191 IPOs in the U.S. priced this year, a 48% rise from last year, but still lower than the levels seen from 2018 to 2021, according to data from Renaissance Capital.
