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October Highlights: Private capital backed the buildout as the public market pulled back

Authored by Andrew Alden, CFA
Emerging Trends

October delivered positive returns across Forge's private market benchmarks. The Forge Private Market Index (FPMI) rose +6.1%, while the Forge Accuidity Private Market Index (FAPMI), which includes public-price exposure, gained +2.4%. Both benchmarks advanced, though FPMI's stronger result reflected a concentrated group of private-company gains. That resilience stood against a weaker public backdrop: SPY declined -0.9% and QQQ fell -6.7%.

Forge index and thematic basket returns as of October 31, 2026.Forge index and thematic basket returns as of October 31, 2026.
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Fintech strength in scaled financial platforms contrasted with crypto-linked weakness

The Forge Fintech thematic basket was October's strongest theme, gaining +8.5%. Ramp (+27.45%) and Stripe (+8.05%) supported the advance, while Kraken (-10.32%) showed that financial-technology strength did not extend uniformly to crypto-linked businesses. Ramp rose +27.45% after announcing a $1.85 billion primary round at a $60 billion valuation. The company said annualized revenue had surpassed $2 billion, with more than 85,000 customers, over $275 billion in annualized purchase volume and positive cash flow.1 Kraken declined -10.32% during a month in which Bitcoin fell -7.34%.2

AI and Chips advanced, but were not the month's leaders

The Forge Artificial Intelligence (AI) thematic basket gained +1.6%, trailing Fintech, Consumer, and Aerospace & Defense. Databricks (+7.41%) and Anduril (+6.15%) supported the result, while SandboxAQ (-39.54%) and Perplexity (-13.67%) were material offsets.

The Forge Chips thematic basket added +1.5%. Ayar Labs (+3.51%) joined Wiwynn and GUC in a live demonstration of an integrated optical-compute system at the OCP Global Summit in October.3 In September, Ayar Labs expanded its 2026 funding to $650 million to scale manufacturing-ready co-packaged optics for AI systems.4 PsiQuantum (+1.44%) announced an optical-circuit-switch technology for its silicon-photonics platform as it advances toward utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum systems.5

Consumer and Aerospace & Defense broadened the advance

The Forge Consumer thematic basket rose +7.5%, led by Zipline (+51.60%). Axios reported that Zipline had begun the permitting process for four drone charging towers near Charlotte,6 a step toward expanding its local delivery infrastructure.

The strongest advances also extended beyond software and financial platforms into companies applying AI to physical systems. The Forge Aerospace & Defense thematic basket gained +4.4%, with Anduril and Saronic (+7.55%) supporting the result. Both companies also belong to the AI basket, highlighting a more applied AI theme: autonomy in physical systems rather than model development alone. Anduril announced a $3.7 billion investment in its Arsenal-2 submarine-production facility alongside a U.S. Navy contract worth up to $2.9 billion,7 while Saronic's chief executive described AI-driven autonomous ships as a response to the U.S. shipbuilding-capacity gap.8

Neuralink (+107.23%) was the largest visible private-company advance in the month's benchmark results. Its move, together with Zipline's, helped lift FPMI.

Public-market scrutiny remained part of the valuation test

FAPMI's +2.4% gain included meaningful public-price offsets. SpaceX (-10.70%) and Cerebras (-38.54%) weighed on the benchmark.

Anthropic (+0.00%) filed for an initial public offering on October 26, bringing its growth, cost structure and governance disclosures closer to public-market review. The filing was reported to show $16.3 billion of first-half revenue and a $693 million operating loss.9

OpenAI (+0.00%) was also reported to be negotiating a prospective financing of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation.10 The proposed round was not a completed financing. Separately, Microsoft reported $10 billion of quarterly revenue from its commercial arrangements with OpenAI and $7.2 billion in receivables at September end, according to TechCrunch's account of Microsoft's filing.11

October's gains came with visible limits

October showed resilience in the private market, not immunity from broader valuation and execution risk. FPMI and FAPMI both advanced while SPY and QQQ declined, and every Forge thematic basket finished higher. Yet the declines in SandboxAQ, Perplexity, Kraken, SpaceX and Cerebras kept the month's strong headline returns from becoming a blanket conclusion about private-company conditions.

1 Ramp via PR Newswire, 10/15/2026

2 Simple Mining, 11/02/2026

3 Ayar Labs, Wiwynn and GUC via PR Newswire, 10/13/2026

4 Ayar Labs, 09/10/2026

5 PsiQuantum, 10/2026

6 Axios, 10/25/2026

7 Anduril, 10/06/2026

8 Washington Post, 10/22/2026

9 TechCrunch, 10/26/2026

10 TechCrunch, 10/22/2026

11 TechCrunch, 10/28/2026

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