Scale & Strategy
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Here’s what we got for you today:
- Startup Valuations Blow Past Historic IPO Records
- Duolingo’s Social Star Steps Down: Zaria Parvez on Virality, Burnout, and What’s Next
Startup Valuations Blow Past Historic IPO Records
Only a handful of tech companies have ever debuted in the U.S. with a $100B+ market cap. OpenAI, SpaceX, and others have now sailed past that mark—without even going public.
OpenAI’s pending secondary sale values the company at $500B. SpaceX just closed one at $400B. Anthropic is reportedly raising at $170B, and Databricks is eyeing a $100B round.
If these companies do eventually go public, they’ll test just how much weight the IPO market can handle.
“These are extraordinary prices, but for extraordinary assets,” said Mary D’Onofrio of Crosslink Capital.
For perspective: since 1980, only five U.S. tech IPOs have cracked the $100B line (inflation-adjusted)—AT&T Wireless, Facebook, Airbnb, Coupang, and Palm. The rest of the 3,000+ tech IPOs together add up to about $6T in market cap.
The last time IPOs came close to today’s scale was the dot-com bubble in 2000 ($976B in IPO market caps) and again in 2021 ($905B).
Optimists point to today’s AI giants as potential trillion-dollar businesses, comparing them to Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, and Microsoft. OpenAI’s numbers help fuel that belief: revenue has jumped from $10B in June to $13B annualized, and it’s reportedly on track to $20B by year-end.
The bullish case: generative AI targets the “market for human work,” which dwarfs traditional software. That could unlock staggering upside.
The bearish case: sky-high valuations may leave little room for future returns, and cutthroat competition could erode margins.
For now, venture investors and private markets are betting big. The question is whether public markets will be ready when these giants finally line up to list.
Duolingo’s Social Star Steps Down: Zaria Parvez on Virality, Burnout, and What’s Next
Zaria Parvez, the social media mind behind Duolingo’s viral success, is stepping away after more than five years.
At just 26, Parvez turned the brand’s TikTok into a cultural phenomenon, growing it to 16.7M followers and delivering headline-making moments: sparring with Dua Lipa fans, mocking anti-vaxxers, and even staging the death of mascot Duo—an audacious campaign that generated 1.7B impressions and inspired a wave of memes, free influencer content, and even fake Duo coffins.
Her work made her a recognizable personality in her own right, but it also came with costs. Managing a brand at that scale meant constant anxiety, sleepless nights, and learning where the line was only after crossing it. “You don’t know where the line is until you cross it,” Parvez said. “And I crossed it a few times.”
She weathered backlash—like a poorly received Amber Heard joke during the Depp trial—and learned to build boundaries. Still, she admits her biggest professional wins came when she blurred the line between work and life. “That’s a hard truth,” she said.
Parvez leaves Duolingo with plans to take on another brand role before launching her own consultancy and writing a book. Her advice for social marketers:
- Treat comments as creative briefs.
- Don’t chase ROI too early—start with awareness.
- Accept that virality is the norm, but it comes at a personal cost.
“I might be Zaria from Duolingo, but there’s also parts of it that are scary,” she said. “Creating outside of the pressure to go viral is what’s keeping me grounded—and why it was time to leave.”
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