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A LETTER FROM OUR CEO
Tom Callahan
Chief Executive Officer, Nasdaq Private Market
There is a mega-trend happening in the global capital markets. It’s not new; it’s been underway for over 30 years. It’s a trend that is having a profound impact on innovation, capital formation, and investor behavior. Despite its power, even many market veterans haven’t fully come to terms with what it means.
That trend is the explosive growth of private markets. In 1996, more than 8,000 companies were listed on U.S. public exchanges. Today, that number is just over 4,000 (World Bank). In 2013, there were 39 unicorns — private companies valued at more than $1 billion. Today, there are more than 1,500. The top venture backed private companies alone carry a combined valuation exceeding $5 trillion (Bloomberg).
As an investor, if you want to own the members of the Magnificent 7, class of 2040, odds are those companies today are private. The markets today are aggressively re-valuing SAAS business and pricing in the risk of vibe-coded disruption. Who are the companies causing all this disruption? All private. In fact, if you look at the leaders across the fastest growing sectors of the economy such as AI, space, robotics, and defense tech – they are all private.
“Some of the most consequential wealth creation of our era is happening in the private markets.”
TOP 10 PRIVATE COMPANIES
Top 10 Private Companies have market cap of $3T+
Latest Valuation (Billions)
Source: Nasdaq Private Market Data & Intelligence
| Company | Valuation |
|---|---|
| SpaceX | $1,250B |
| OpenAI | $730B |
| Anthropic | $350B |
| ByteDance | $330B |
| Stripe | $140B |
| Databricks | $134B |
| Canva | $42B |
| Ripple | $40B |
| Figure AI | $39B |
| Epic Games | $34B |
Since the peak in 2021, we are now in our 5th year of an IPO hiatus. Every year it seems there is a different excuse why companies don’t go public.
Companies are choosing to stay private longer, and that choice is increasingly deliberate. What if, for many founders, the cost/benefit of public vs private no longer favors an IPO? What if the private markets have evolved to the extent that companies can grow, raise capital, attract and retain the best talent, and execute M&A, all without the infrastructure, cost and responsibilities of being a public company?
IPO-scale liquidity is now achievable in both primary and secondary markets
IPO-scale liquidity is now achievable in both primary and secondary markets, allowing companies to stay private longer. In 2025, secondary markets saw tenders alone hit $35 billion, while IPOs topped off in the $45 billion range.
Source: Nasdaq Private Market Data & Intelligence; Bloomberg
Liquidity is moving earlier & cadence is accelerating
Tenders are becoming a strategic tool for companies to manage talent and they are running them more frequently and at earlier stages. Nearly 50% of tender programs that NPM ran in 2025 were for Series A, B and C companies, compared to just 30% two years ago.
Source: Nasdaq Private Market Data & Intelligence
Block Trading Volume More Than Doubled
NPM saw a sharp increase in trading activity in 2025, with closed trades by our Transfer & Settlement team more than doubling year-over-year — from $372 million in 2024 to $673 million in 2025. The number of unique companies allowing direct secondary transfers grew sharply from NPM’s perspective — from 12 issuers with settled trades in 2024 to 31 in 2025 (Nasdaq Private Market Data & Intelligence).
2024
$372M
→
2025
$673M
Cashless Exercise: A Win for Option Holders
A growing number of NPM clients began allowing employees who hold options to sell them directly in the secondary market in 2025. This is a major development for employees, because it eliminates the need to come up with cash upfront to exercise options, purchase common shares, and then find a buyer.
Single-asset Funds Increasingly Define Access
In 2025, single-asset funds became the predominant trading vehicle for the most in-demand private issuers and transactions, reflecting both issuer preferences around cap table control and investor demand for curated access. In this environment, the differentiator is quality: high-quality, single-layer vehicles sponsored by well-known GPs have emerged as the most efficient and trusted path to exposure.
THE SECTOR SCENE
AI and Space dominate the private market by market cap
Driven by OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Potential 2026 mega-IPOs could dramatically reshape sector weights. Meanwhile, defense and robotics are emerging as the next wave of private market focus.
The 2026 IPO Pipeline
The backlog is significant: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Lambda, Kraken, Cerebras, and Discord are all in various stages of preparation. Outside the top 10, the next 25 largest private companies carry a combined market cap exceeding $440 billion (Nasdaq Private Market Data & Intelligence).
Secondaries: No Longer Second Fiddle
GP-led secondary volume reached $47 billion in H1 2025 (+68% y/y). LP-led volume hit $56 billion (+40% y/y). The average venture secondary priced at 78% of NAV. This is structural, not cyclical — and we expect secondaries to be a permanent fixture alongside IPOs and M&A.
Source: Jefferies
M&A: Getting Creative
Global M&A hit near-record levels in 2025, with Americas volume up 45% year-over-year (Crunchbase). Liquidity events no longer require outright acquisitions:
- Meta → Scale AI: $14B for a 49% non-voting stake
- Google → Windsurf: $2.4B acquihire
- Nvidia → Groq: ~$20B to license technology (Bloomberg)
AI
AI: From Growth Race to Strategy Race
Key themes for 2026: differentiation shifts from parameter counts to agentic capabilities and workflow integration; cost-performance becomes a battleground as inference costs fall; enterprise procurement matures.
Source: NPM Data & Intelligence
★
Space: Defense, Data, Infrastructure
Private space investment grew 48% year-over-year to $12.4 billion in 2025. Launch is diversifying beyond SpaceX, with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Firefly, Astra, and Stoke all competing.
Source: Bloomberg
⚙
Robotics: Breakout Year
2025 was a breakout year for humanoid robots. Figure AI raised a $1B Series C at $39B. Agility raised $400M at ~$2B, and Apptronik raised $415M.
Source: Pitchbook
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