I’ve spent 25 years in venture capital. Here’s how it quietly shut ordinary Americans out of the AI wealth boom—and what could fix it

In tech circles, a lot of people are wringing their hands right now over how much venture capital is going to a small handful of companies. The same names come up every time: Open AI, Anthropic, Space X, Anduril, Databricks. The usual complaint is that too much capital is piling up at the top and that the venture market has lost its balance. That is true, but it misses the larger structural change underway and the inequality problem it is creating. What we are watching is the replacement of the traditional IPO path with a private-market system that now carries many of the most valuable growth companies far beyond the point where they once would have gone public. These are no longer ordinary late-stage venture rounds. They are increasingly private-public hybrids, with mega-funds, mutual funds, sovereign capital and other institutions effectively front-running what used to be the public market. There are obvious reasons companies prefer this route. A deep private-market ecosystem now gives elite businesses much of what public markets used to offer: huge pools of capital, active secondaries, liquidity for insiders, and sophisticated investors willing to keep writing larger checks. If a company can raise billions privately, provide selective liquidity to employees and early backers, and retain control, there is far less urgency to subject itself to public markets. But the deeper reason this system keeps expanding is regulatory. Going public has become too burdensome, too litigious and, for many companies, too irrational. Sarbanes-Oxley added costs and compliance obligations that fall especially hard on smaller public companies. The 1933 and 1934 securities laws, combined with accredited-investor rules, keep the most attractive private securities largely reserved for institutions and wealthy individuals. This effectively makes it illegal for much of the middle class or the poor to participate directly in the biggest wealth creation events in modern history. At the same tim