OpenAI era drives traditional stock analysts toward private markets

In today’s rapidly shifting landscape, OpenAI has become a symbol of how non-public companies now dominate innovation, competitive pressure, and investor curiosity.

The result: traditional equity analysts are increasingly being pushed toward the opaque world of private-market intelligence.

Morgan Stanley has become the latest major bank to launch dedicated research coverage of private firms, joining JPMorgan, Citigroup and UBS.

The move reflects surging client demand for insight into fast-growing companies like SpaceX and other unlisted giants whose influence rivals and often surpasses their public competitors.

Analysts noted that the shift marks a structural turning point for Wall Street. 

Unlike publicly traded firms, private companies reveal little about their financials or performance benchmarks, forcing research teams to adopt new methods: alternative data, industry sourcing, and competitive modeling that relies more on inference than disclosure.

Citigroup’s head of US equity research, Anne Malone, said interest in private-firm analysis is now “immense,” driven both by investors wanting exposure and by concerns over how firms like OpenAI could disrupt publicly listed holdings.

As the OpenAI era accelerates, banks are betting that private-company research will become a permanent pillar of modern equity analysis.