Private Market Update March 2025

As Major League Baseball’s stars prepare for Opening Day in balmy climates, an array of private companies are also in spring training for the long-anticipated opening of the market. While the ‘IPO Spring’ hasn’t quite sprung yet, they have been busy with SEC filings and investment bank conversations, likely to see if the temperature is warm enough to take a swing at going public.

Indeed, NYSE Group President Lynn Martin said at the Bloomberg Invest conference recently that the second quarter of this year is looking like it will be active, and she doesn't think recent volatility will derail that.¹ Martin’s counterpart, Adena Friedman, CEO at exchange operator Nasdaq, agreed that there is a healthy pipeline of U.S. initial public offerings.² Moreover, while private-to-public pathways haven't been fully unleashed, Bloomberg data does show improvement, with first-time share sales in the U.S. raising nearly $10 billion through March 4, a 36% increase year over year.³

For 2025, Martin sees U.S. IPOs getting back to the more normal raise of about $50 billion per year.⁴

That could be boosted by recent developments, like AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave filing its S-1 in early March for an IPO that could raise perhaps as much as $4 billion⁵ and value the company at over $35 billion.⁶

In the burgeoning crypto realm, Winklevoss twins-backed Gemini confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO earlier this month.⁷ The potential IPO follows the SEC's decision to end its investigation into Gemini without taking action and a $5 million settlement of a separate lawsuit by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.⁸ Gemini joins several other crypto firms, including Kraken, Circle, Bullish, and Blockchain.com, that are considering public listings amid a retreat from full-scale litigation by the SEC.⁹

Similarly, in the fintech space, Chime, which confidentially filed to go public at the end of last year,¹⁰ could IPO in the first half of 2025¹¹ and buy now, pay later trailblazer, Klarna, recently filed its registration statement, as it seeks to raise over $1 billion.¹²

Hinge Health is another hot prospect that recently filed, with a potential IPO occurring as soon as April.¹³ Other big names include design software platform Figma,¹⁴ along with social communication app Discord¹⁵ and ticketing platform StubHub,¹⁶ all reportedly speaking with investment bankers about possible IPOs that could happen this year.

To be fair, it's not all rosy news. Genesys, a customer service software provider that was planning an approximately $2 billion IPO this spring, has decided to delay these plans until later in the year due to recent public market volatility, according to The Information.¹⁷

Even with the recent volatility, however, Bruce Van Suan, CEO of Citizens Bank, told Bloomberg that he foresees the middle of 2025, and especially the second half of the year, being more IPO-hospitable, lifted by tailwinds around regulation, tax and fiscal policy.¹⁸

As it stands, though, public markets haven't exactly been making it easy to play ball. Politics and geopolitical tumult are impacting financial markets, particularly with the back-and-forth on tariffs causing stocks to whipsaw in recent weeks.

In February, major indexes such as SPY and QQQ fell by -1.3% and -2.6% respectively. ¹⁹ The Renaissance IPO ETF, which tracks newly public companies, fared even worse, with a -6.0% tumble for the month.²⁰ That's not even counting the rough start some stocks are off to in March, as investors balk at the prospect of an extended trade war with China, Canada and Mexico.

However, the private market tells a rather different story because of several key factors:

Slow and steady wins the race

The sometimes more complex and methodical nature of private market transactions, contrasted with the nearly instantaneous nature of public market trades, has worked in the private market's favor recently. While public markets have been seemingly swinging back and forth based on government announcements and social media posts, the slower pace of the private markets provides some insulation from emotional or reactionary trading.

Hitting home runs

Another key factor in the private market, especially when considering VC investing, is that there's often a higher risk/reward ratio when compared to the public market. Compared to investing in blue chips with steady growth expectations, for example, private market investing is often built on the expectation that, through diverse allocations, there will be enough home runs to compensate for the strikeouts.

In February, this became evident with Figure AI's grand slam milestone, as news reports highlighted the company was in talks to raise $1.5 billion at a nearly $40 billion valuation,²¹ which would be over 15 times more than its 2024 Series B valuation.²² This further catapulted the FPMI’s outperformance in recent months.

That said, private market gains aren't solely limited to home runs. Getting enough base hits can not only help a team win, but it can also balance out the inevitable swings and misses at the plate. For example, the Forge Accuidity Private Market Index, which serves as the benchmark for Accuidity’s Megacorn Strategy (the first fund of its kind that tracks a diversified group of late-stage private market companies), also had a strong month, gaining 3.3% in February and 16.2% over the last three months (December 01, 2024 – February 28, 2025), even though Figure AI is not part of this index.²³

With these recent gains, along with continued IPO optimism, the private market appears to be on a more solid footing, at least compared to the public market. That's not to say investors are necessarily adopting relentless positivity. Uncertainty will likely remain a key theme in the near future and the risk of recession could be real, while noting that the yield curve inverted at the end of February.²⁴

For now, though, there are still signs of strength, like with public stocks wrapping up a relatively healthy earnings season,²⁵ along with private market trading activity picking up in February, despite it being a short month.²⁶ Yet, we’re still far from the seventh-inning stretch in 2025.

So, as spring training winds down in the coming days, we'll see if this is finally a breakout year for private markets — and IPOs in particular — or if we'll be singing the same refrain that many sports fans end up reciting: "There's always next year."

IOIs extend hot streak

Over the past five months, there's been a surge in indication of interest (IOIs) on Forge, particularly from the buy side. Even with strong sell-side interest in February, with many investors looking to take advantage of a market reawakening, buy-side IOIs pretty much held their ground in February, remaining at levels resembling the bull market in 2020-2021.

Number of unique issuers stretches toward highs

When an influx of issuers put out sell-side IOIs, that can sometimes be cause for concern, as it could mean investors are fleeing positions that haven't worked out. However, when looked at in the context of having a high number of buy-side IOIs, too, the jump in the number of unique issuers with sell IOIs on Forge seems to point more toward sellers wanting to take advantage of healthy buyer appetite.

Spreads tick above median due to issuer change

Median spreads rose in February to slightly above the 11% median. While that can sometimes signal liquidity challenges, the difference can largely be attributed to a change in the issuers that were part of the January versus February mix. When you compare issuers who had spreads in both January and February, the median dropped slightly, which could be a signal of private market health. However, some companies had new buy and sell IOIs in February that did not have them in January, which contributed to the jump.

Trade premiums slip at top, climb from bottom

Lastly, the distribution of trade premiums showed some divergence, with the median dipping slightly to -27%. That was largely due to some slippage at the top, though these companies are still trading at significant premiums versus their last primary funding rounds. Perhaps a more encouraging sign, however, was that those in the bottom quartile started to recover, though they're still trading at a -40% discount.