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Founding the New Economy
Jul 13, 2026
The challenges, opportunities and experiences of founders offer lessons for all types of financial decision-makers. Here’s what to know.
Why It Matters
- Macroeconomic complexity is leading founders to adapt their strategies, not pause them. Founders are more cautious in their approach to raising capital in the current environment, but they’re considering alternative capital sources, increasing investor conversations and extending fundraising timelines.
- The funding playbook for founders has multiple paths. While IPOs remain an important goal for founders, they’re considering a wider range of capital and liquidity strategies and emphasizing flexibility.
- Artificial intelligence is becoming a strategic test. The vast majority of founders see AI as critical to the success of their businesses, but many feel they still need support in keeping up with AI.
The Big Picture: Founders are building their businesses while navigating macroeconomic complexity and an environment in which artificial intelligence is raising the stakes for their operations, fundraising and success. Founders’ flexible, adaptive approaches offer signals for companies and investors alike.
As they start and scale companies and help shape the new economy, founders provide investors and business leaders with insights into an expanding set of fundraising and liquidity strategies. Their shared experiences highlight the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence, as well as the power of support for founders and their businesses across the wealth and capital markets lifecycle.
To better understand founders’ experiences, decision-making and views, Morgan Stanley recently interviewed 150 private company founders at Series A or later-stage companies, the majority of whom have raised a Series C round or higher. Founders as a community “are builders, they’re so critical to the economy, it’s where job creation happens, it’s where innovation ultimately lives,” Morgan Stanley Chief Client Officer Mandell Crawley told CNBC at the inaugural Founders Summit in May. The challenges, opportunities and reflections these founders shared, including around growth, paths to liquidity and AI, offer lessons for all types of financial decision-makers. The breadth of this capital markets cycle, as Morgan Stanley Research has shown, allows investors to reward innovation and companies that access capital in new and evolving forms.
1. Adapt to macro complexity – don’t pause because of it
58% of the founders Morgan Stanley interviewed in its Founder Survey said the current macroeconomic environment has made their capital-raising approach more cautious. But most are adapting rather than pausing or pulling back.
As they navigate this environment, more than half of founders reported pursuing alternative capital sources, while 40% are increasing the number of investor conversations and 33% are extending the time needed to fundraise. Founders are seeking a variety of capital sources beyond traditional venture capital, including strategic investments and, in the case of later-stage companies, debt and structured equity.
Rather than waiting for conditions to change, founders are adapting and broadening their strategies now so they can continue to build and move forward.
2. The funding playbook is evolving, with multiple options
For founders, optionality and flexibility are forms of financial strength.
In Morgan Stanley’s survey, founders reported revenue growth (63%) and raising capital (45%) as their top two business priorities. The decisions they make around growth, capital and timing have a lasting impact on outcomes for their businesses, their partners and relationships, as well as their own founder journeys.
“Historically, liquidity was essentially when you went to IPO,” Crawley said at the Morgan Stanley Founders Summit. This year has seen growing momentum in the IPO market, marked by SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO in June and global IPOs up 125% year over year in 2Q26 QTD, according to Morgan Stanley Research. And though founders reported an IPO is their most common goal, they're also viewing timeline flexibility as a strategic advantage. “Now, there are many other tools for founders to get liquidity,” Crawley said.
Founders are expanding their paths to liquidity, including via secondary transactions, such as tender offers. As companies remain private for longer, tender offers have emerged as the most-used structured liquidity event for private companies, according to a Morgan Stanley at Work Liquidity Trends survey from earlier this year. Companies are increasingly utilizing tender offers “as a flexible tool for bridging the gap between rising liquidity demand and delayed exit timelines,” including for interim liquidity in the lead-up to an IPO, Morgan Stanley at Work found. In its survey, 54% of private companies reported having conducted a tender offer previously, and 47% reported that a tender offer will be their next liquidity event.
A key theme for 2026 for founders and private companies, according to an M&A outlook from Morgan Stanley Investment Banking, is “the growing maturity of the minority‑capital market, as more private-equity firms and institutional investors buy sizeable non‑control stakes in founder‑led businesses. This gives founders access to substantial capital while preserving control and staying private longer.” And for investors, founder-led businesses can offer a number of benefits, an analysis by Morgan Stanley Investment Management found.
3. Now is the time to align AI strategy
As the Morgan Stanley Institute recently covered, AI is no longer a tech story – it's a macro variable. The buildout of AI infrastructure is “this year’s most important macro and micro story,” and one of the “biggest variables for markets,” according to Morgan Stanley Research’s Andrew Sheets.
AI has also quickly emerged as foundational to business strategy, with Morgan Stanley Research finding that the impact for companies adopting AI, including on productivity gains and jobs, is accelerating.
AI is top of mind for founders as well. 95% of founders in Morgan Stanley’s survey identified AI as critical to the success of their businesses, yet fewer than a quarter feel “very well supported” in keeping up with the pace of AI and new technologies. And more than 60% identified keeping up with AI as a top business challenge they face – the most of any challenge measured in the survey.
Source: Morgan Stanley Founder Survey
Source: Morgan Stanley Founder Survey
The gap between AI support and strategy has consequences for fundraising as well, in an environment in which perceptions of a company being an “AI winner” can influence its access to capital. For private companies, AI presents opportunities to scale efficiently, demonstrate growth to investors and differentiate to raise capital.
In public markets, companies are increasingly able to quantify the benefits of adopting AI, as Morgan Stanley Research has found, with 25% of companies in the S&P 500 citing at least one measurable benefit (up from 13% in 1Q25). And Morgan Stanley Research’s recent mapping of 3,600 stocks for AI exposure found that the gap between AI adopters and those being disrupted by AI is widening.
Takeaways
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For Investors:“Private companies have increased their focus on raising capital with individual investors; they express a dual benefit of expanding their investor base and tapping into stakeholders who use their products. The power of our platform – giving access to private companies at a critical time in their life cycle – has been on full display this year.”
Elizabeth Dennis, Managing Director, Global Head of Integrated Firm Client Coverage
“The environment facing founders today is defined less by a single economic cycle than by overlapping structural shifts—from AI and geopolitics to evolving capital markets. That makes strategic optionality more valuable, but it also raises the premium on disciplined execution and long-term thinking.”
Lisa Shalett, Chief Investment Office, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
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For Companies:“Founders are operating in a market with more complexity, both geopolitical and technological, but also with more tools. Those who prepare early can turn uncertainty into flexibility – and flexibility into strategic advantage. Look to the example set by founders – the strongest founders aren’t waiting for the markets to give them an answer. They’re building multiple paths to capital and liquidity before they need them.”
Shawn Murphy, Managing Director, Head of Private Markets, Morgan Stanley at Work
“We’re seeing now many of our clients think about this broader set of planning, as opposed to discretely thinking about just capital raising, or just IPO, or just M&A. ‘Do I have what it takes to hit that bar?’ ‘Do I need to work with another party to get there?’ ‘Or in fact, is there something that I can take with my company, get to distribution much faster in an M&A context, and that could be the path that makes the most sense?’”
Brittany Skoda, Managing Director, Global Head of AI & Software, Investment Banking
“At Morgan Stanley, we work alongside the world’s most ambitious private company founders, throughout their full journey. We bring together workplace, wealth, investment banking and capital markets capabilities to support founders as builders, operators and individuals. We provide access to a deep network of investors, corporate decision-makers and other founders, plus the resources founders need at every step of their journey.”
Mandell Crawley, Chief Client Officer
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