The Year in Review

The S&P500/Nasdaq were each down ~1% this week, as continued concerns around AI-related capital spending (especially in names like Oracle and Broadcom) were offset by a cooler-than-expected CPI print. YTD the S&P500/Nasdaq100 are now +15/+19%. Our NPM Private Market Tracker*, which shows the estimated average price performance of the 50 largest names in our internal Tape D® data is +55% YTD. (Source: NPM; Bloomberg)

Stacked rounds drove top performers in 2025. This year saw many fast-growing private companies raise several rounds in quick succession, with valuations of later rounds at 2x or more where previous rounds priced. We believe this was driven by: (1) Demand outstripping supply in earlier rounds, which can spur founders and existing investors to raise capital again quickly, (2) Rapid revenue growth, which gave investors justification to underwrite higher valuations for some companies after just a few months, and (3) capital rotation into themes such as AI, which created competition for exposure in key names.

And the winners are… Online betting platform Kalshi shares are up +918%, with a $2 billion Series C in June, a $5 million Series D in October, and a $11 billion Series E in December (Source: Reuters). Shares in Mercor, which specializes in reinforcement learning from human feedback for AI, are +791% after a $2 billion Series B in February and a $10 billion Series C in October (Source: CNBC, TechCrunch). Shares in Anysphere, whose Cursor product uses AI to help programmers code, are up +554%, with a $2.5 billion Series B in January, a $9.9 billion Series C in June, and a $23.9 billion Series D valuation in November (source: New York Times, Bloomberg). We note that the share price performance need not match the magnitude of increase in the most recent capital raise, as our data reflects secondary share trading occurring around these primary rounds as well. Anthropic (+376%), Figure AI (+365%), Reflection AI (+320%), Crusoe (+280%), OpenAI (+197%) and Anduril (+174%) were other top performers.

Single names led FinTech, Robotics and AI to outperform. With the significant company gains described above, it may not be surprising that, in a relatively small and illiquid market, these companies led their sectors to shine for the year. Looking at our Tape D® data for broader private market sectors weighted by valuation, Financials were up 264% (Kalshi), Robotics was up 240% (Figure AI), and AI was up 215% (Mercor, Anysphere, Anthropic, OpenAI, Reflection AI). The worst performing sectors included Biotech & Life Sciences, Shared Mobility, and Energy Transportation and Storage. These sectors include some poorly-performing companies and did not benefit from positive macro factors.

RECENT EVENTS

• The Financial Times reported that Blue Owl would not participate in a $10 billion financing for one of Oracle’s data centers in Michigan (Financial Times, 12/17).
• Anthropic will source up to 2.3 GW of compute from data centers being developed by bitcoin miner Hut 8 (The Information, 12/18).
• OpenAI is in talks to raise $10 billion from Amazon (Bloomberg, 12/17).
• PayPal has applied to become a bank by forming a Utah-chartered industrial loan company. Crypto firms Circle, Ripple and Paxos gained preliminary regulatory approval to become banks last week (Bloomberg, 12/15).

NOTABLE CAPITAL RAISES

• Waymo is in talks to raise several billion dollars at a valuation of at least $100 billion (The Information, 12/16).
• Databricks is raising more than $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation (Axios, 12/17).
• Lovable, a vibe coding startup, raised $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation (Axios, 12/17).
• Israeli data security company Cyera is raising a $400 million round at a $9 billion valuation (Wall Street Journal, 12/16).
• Radian Nuclear, a developer of portable nuclear microreactors, raised over $300 million at a valuation of over $1.8 billion. Last Energy, a developer of micro-nuclear-reactors, raise a $100 million Series C (StrictlyVC, Pitchbook, 12/17).
• OpenEvidence, which offers a ChatGPT-like product for doctors, is raising $250 million at a $12 billion valuation (The Information, 12/12).

NOTABLE EXITS

• Medline, a distributor of hospital supplies, raised $6.3 billion in an IPO (Pitchbook, 12/17).
• Salesforce will acquire Qualified, a startup that helps Salesforce customers generate sales leads from their websites (The Information, 12/18).
• Intel is nearing a deal to acquire chip startup SambaNova for $1.6 billion (Bloomberg, 12/12).