In a very pleasant corner of San Francisco, Nasdaq is quietly expanding its West Coast operations. But it is not in town merely to persuade Silicon Valley’s hottest tech companies to prepare their initial public offerings. Far from it.
在旧金山一个非常舒适的角落，纳斯达克(Nasdaq)正悄悄扩大其西海岸业务。但纳斯达克来到旧金山不仅仅是为了说服硅谷最炙手可热的科技公司筹备首次公开发行(IPO)。远非如此。
In March last year, the New York-based stock exchange quietly established a private platform for “pre-IPO” companies to raise capital and trade secondary shares. Some 60 companies now sit on the Nasdaq Private Market. And Nasdaq officials admit that some of these tech groups plan never to list at all.
去年3月，这家总部位于纽约的证交所悄悄为“上市前”(pre-IPO)企业筹集资本和进行股票的二级市场交易推出了一个私人平台。目前有大约60家企业通过纳斯达克私人股票交易市场Nasdaq Private Market融资。纳斯达克高管承认，其中一些科技公司根本没有上市计划。
This is a striking quirk of today’s American “markets” — and it should give investment groups and regulators pause for thought. Back in the last tech boom at the end of the 20th century, when a tech company swelled it usually tried to list swiftly on an exchange. Getting on to a public market gave a young company credibility — and it was essential if a company needed large chunks of capital for investment, or a mechanism to enable its early employees to cash in their options.
这是当今美国“市场”一件引人注目的奇事，它应会让投资集团和监管机构停下来思考。回首20世纪末上次科技热潮时，当一家科技公司扩张时，通常会努力迅速在证交所上市。上市会给一家年轻公司带来信誉，如果一家公司需要大量资金用于投资，或者需要一种机制让早期员工将手中期权变现，那么上市是重要之举。
This boom-time around, tech listings on the main market are certainly under way: huge recent IPOs have included names such as Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant, and Lending Club, the world’s biggest peer-to-peer lender.
在本次热潮中，当然也有科技公司正在主板上市：最近的大规模IPO包括中国互联网巨头阿里巴巴(Alibaba)，和全球最大P2P贷款机构Lending Club等公司的上市。
But many other fast-swelling companies are not listing, instead raising private money through so-called “late-stage” financing rounds, which often enable the company’s owners (be they employees, founders, or even earlier investors) to sell. Some sales occur through platforms such as Nasdaq; many sidestep even these “private” markets.
但很多其他迅速壮大的公司没有上市，而是通过所谓的“晚期”(late-stage)融资筹集私人资金，这通常能够让这些公司的所有者（不管是员工、创始人还是早期投资者）出售股权。一些股权出售通过纳斯达克等平台进行；很多甚至连这些“私人”市场也避开。
You have to spend only a few hours in Silicon Valley to realise that the scale of this cyclical boom is astonishing. For those of us who saw the first dotcom bubble, the sight of hot money rushing into hot tech start-ups creates a sense of déjà vu. But what makes the current pattern startling is not simply the scale of money swirling around, but the channels it is moving through.
在硅谷待上几个小时，你就会意识到这种周期性热潮的规模是惊人的。对于目睹过首次网络泡沫的我们而言，看到热钱涌入热门科技初创企业，会有一种似曾相识的感觉。但目前的模式令人吃惊的方面不仅仅是资金规模，而是资金移动的渠道。
Just last week Uber, Snapchat and Pinterest all revealed large new rounds of private funding. Uber, for example, is raising $1bn, on top of almost $4bn of private finance it has already garnered. Seven weeks into 2015, late-stage tech companies had already raised $16bn, according to PrivCo, a research group. Crunchbase, another data group, estimates that the overall funding provided by venture capital to tech companies reached $66.5bn last year, twice the previous year’s funding levels.
就在最近，Uber、Snapchat和Pinterest都透露了新的几轮大规模私人融资。例如，Uber正融资10亿美元，之前该公司已筹集近40亿美元私人资本。根据研究机构PrivCo的数据，在2015年头7周，“晚期”科技公司已融资160亿美元。另一家数据机构Crunchbase估计，去年，风投机构向科技公司提供的资金总规模达到665亿美元，是之前一年融资规模的两倍。
This has helped to create more than 60 so-called “unicorns” (private companies valued at more than $1bn.)
这帮助缔造了逾60家所谓的“独角兽”公司（指估值超过10亿美元的私人公司）。