Trade wars, Market scars

Amid many ups and downs, since peaking on 2/19, the S&P500 is down 14%, and the tech heavy NASDAQ100 is down 13%. Private markets have fared better, with our NPM Private Market Tracker*, which shows the estimated average price performance of the 50 largest names in our internal Tape D® data essentially flat.

Despite the market volatility, VC investing continues at a robust pace. For 1Q25, VC backed firms globally raised $145bn across 2,241 deals vs. $82.5bn/2,415 (+76%/-7% y/y) deals in 1Q24. The US represented $107bn (74%) vs. $40.6bn (49%) in 1Q24. AI continues to gain share, representing 37% of invested US VC funds in 1Q25 vs. 29% in the year ago quarter. The largest funding to date this year is OpenAI’s $40bn offering, which was 37% of the US 1Q25 total. (Source: Pitchbook)

BIGGEST MOVERS AND TOPICAL NAMES

Tariff uncertainty has the potential to further delay an already lethargic IPO market. Following “Liberation Day” (4/2) eToro, Klarna and Stubhub announced they were delaying their much anticipated IPOs (Bloomberg). This occured after car sharing firm Turo withdrew its IPO on 2/13 (TechCrunch).

However, there are nonetheless signs of life. Design software company Figma filed for an IPO on 4/15 and stablecoin issuer Circle filed on 4/2. Data center firm Coreweave priced an IPO on 3/27 to a lukewarm reception; shares are currently roughly flat with the IPO price (Bloomberg).

Based on our proprietary Tape D® data, the best performers in the private market since the 2/19 selloff began have been Anduril (+27% estimated share price performance) and xAI (+23%). See p2 for details.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

Preliminary GDP growth for 1Q will be released on 4/30. Bloomberg consensus is for 1.1% y/y growth, a deceleration from 2.4% in 4Q24, largely due to trade uncertainty. In other words, the economics community is not currently seeing a recession, although we note that the growth estimates have come down precipitously during 1Q.

*Nasdaq Private Market, LLC is the owner/provider of the NPM Private Market Tracker. Nasdaq Private Market, LLC is not an investment adviser and makes no representations regarding the advisability to invest in any companies/SPVs. The NPM Private Market Tracker is for informational purposes and based on sources we believe are reliable. There is no assurance that investments in the underlying companies will return positive results or reflect the track performance of the NPM Private Market Tracker.

RECENT EVENTS

• OpenAI is reportedly in talks to acquire AI assisted coding tool firm, Windsurf, for ~$3bn (4/16; Bloomberg).
• On 4/16, Lyft announced it would buy European taxi app FreeNow for $197mm (The Information).
• On 4/15, Nvidia announced it would take a $5.5bn charge due to restrictions on its chip sales to China (The Wall Street Journal).
• On 4/14 the antitrust case brought by the FTC against Meta went to trial (Bloomberg).

NOTABLE CAPITAL RAISES

• HR software company Rippling is in talks to raise capital from Goldman Sachs, GIC and VC Elad Gil at a $16bn valuation. (The Information)
• AI firm Safe Superintelligence raised $2bn at a $32bn valuation from Google and Nvidia. (4/11; Reuters)
• British crypto miner DRML Miner raised $1bn at an undisclosed valuation (4/7; Bloomberg).

NOTABLE EXITS

• Social media platform X was acquired by Musk’s related xAI for $33bn (Forbes).
• Ripple acquired credit network Hidden Road for $1.25bn. (4/8; Source: The Wall Street Journal)
• Data center firm Coreweave went public on 3/28 at $40 per share (Bloomberg).
• Company % Return Since 2/19/2025
• Space Exploration Technologies Corp. 9.11
• OpenAI LP -1.03
• Databricks, Inc. -2.66
• Stripe, Inc. -3.10
• X.AI Corp 22.48
• Epic Games, Inc. 1.65
• Fanatics Holdings -11.78
• Canva, Inc. -8.97
• Chime Financial, Inc. 6.33
• CoreWeave, Inc. -1.24
• GoBrands, Inc. 4.81
• Discord, Inc. -0.12
• Anduril Industries, Inc. 26.98
• Scale AI, Inc 13.12
• Anthropic PBC 8.51
• People Center, Inc. 1.49
• Grammarly Inc -4.30
• Figma, Inc. 8.63
• Deel, Inc. 5.06
• Brex Inc. -8.15
• Plaid, Inc. 0.56
• Formagrid Inc 4.24
• Notion Labs, Inc. -3.29
• Colossal Biosciences Inc. -15.67
• Tanium Inc. -12.32
• National Resilience, Inc. -1.12
• Farmers Business Network Inc 13.36
• Bolt Financial, Inc. 6.16
• Gusto, Inc. 1.68
• Talkdesk, Inc. 1.11
• Alchemy Insights, Inc. -0.92
• Nuro, Inc. 21.21
• Ripple Labs, Inc. 7.33
• Navan, Inc. 6.15
• Chainalysis Inc. -1.15
• Ramp Business Corporation 0.97
• Snyk Limited -5.63
• Netskope Inc 0.79
• eShares Inc -10.08
• Automation Anywhere, Inc. -2.94
• Impossible Foods, Inc. -9.13
• Upgrade, Inc. 3.14
• Benchling, Inc. 7.13
• DataRobot, Inc. -2.53
• Attentive Mobile, Inc. 2.97
• Cityblock Health, Inc. 1.11
• Workato, Inc. -0.21
• Raintank Inc. -13.12
• Hinge Health, Inc. 3.97
• Cohere, Inc. -2.65