Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Notable

Make the Title I Emerging Growth Company exemptions permanent

Attempted

831 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies

“Make the Title I Emerging Growth Company (EGC) exemptions permanent for all EGCs.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The SEC proposed the substance of this ask by a different route. Rather than extending the five-year emerging growth company clock, the proposal collapses Exchange Act filer statuses into large accelerated filers and non-accelerated filers, raises the large accelerated threshold from $700 million to $2 billion of public float with a sixty-month seasoning requirement, and extends the EGC and smaller-reporting-company accommodations to every non-accelerated filer. The release says so in terms: for the smallest issuers 'the only change made by this proposal ... is to make permanent for them most of the EGC accommodations.' Three limits keep this at attempted rather than partial. It is a proposal, with comments closed and no final rule as of 2026-09-01; EGC status is statutory and the Commission says it is not proposing to eliminate it, so the five-year cut-off in section 2(a)(19) of the Securities Act stands; and the accommodations become permanent for non-accelerated filers, not for all EGCs, since an issuer that crosses the $2 billion threshold loses them.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The Quote’s own instrument would be a statute, because the five-year and $1.235 billion limits on EGC status live in Securities Act section 2(a)(19) and Exchange Act section 3(a)(80). The Commission cannot repeal them; it can only make the accommodations available on other grounds, which is what the May 2026 proposal does.
  • The congressional route, and why it is not an event. H.R. 3323, the Helping Startups Continue To Grow Act, would raise the EGC revenue ceiling from $1 billion to $3 billion, replace the “fifth anniversary” cut-off with a ten-year one, and strike the large-accelerated-filer disqualifier (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr3323rh/html/BILLS-119hr3323rh.htm). It extends rather than makes permanent, and in any case it was reported and placed on the Union Calendar on 2025-06-04 and never voted, which playbook §3b leaves at not started.
  • This item and #2124. The same proposal is the lead Evidence on #2124 (fundamentally reform the securities laws and create a scaled disclosure system). It counts differently there and here: #2124 asks for a three-category structure with specified secondary markets, which the proposal does not build, while this ask is about the durability of the EGC accommodations, which the proposal squarely addresses. Both items sit at attempted because the rule is not final.
  • Companion proposals in the same program, cited on #2124 and not repeated here: Semiannual Reporting (2026-05-07) and Registered Offering Reform (2026-05-26).
Action
expand
Object
Title I Emerging Growth Company (EGC) exemptions
ID
2136