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Insights

September Highlights: Aerospace & Defense edges out AI as September indices performance adds to 2025 gains

By Andrew Alden, CFA
Artificial Intelligence

Both Forge private market indices produced solid gains during the month of September.

  • The Forge Private Market Index (FPMI), ended the month of September at +7.8%
  • The Forge Accuidity Private Market Index (FAPMI) ended the same month at +8.1%

The FPMI and FAPMI are broad-based indices for benchmarking and tracking, respectively, that reflect the health and performance of the private markets as a whole. The FPMI reflects the up-to-date performance and pricing activity of venture-based, late-stage companies that are actively traded on the Forge marketplace. FAPMI was developed for the Accuidity Megacorn Fund to track, and is comprised of 60 privately held, late-stage venture-backed US companies.

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Aerospace & Defense and AI propel FPMI higher

Drilling down into the thematic baskets that helped drive private market performance in September reveals Aerospace & Defense (+24.8%) and AI (+23.9%) were in the lead. For FPMI this meant a boost from Anduril (+73.5%), Databricks (+59.7%) and OpenAI (+54.0%).

  • Anduril showed continued Forge Price™ momentum as it ended the month with a $52.9 billion Forge Price Valuation 
  • Databricks recently raised a $1 billion Series K round at a $100 billion valuation as the company accelerates its AI strategy1
  • OpenAI conducted a share sale at a $500 billion valuation, surpassing SpaceX as the most valuable private company2

Pulling FPMI back in September were FloQast (-23.1%) and Shield AI (-12.5%) which both were lower on trading activity rather than specific news.

AI leads FAPMI, with some underperformance from public holdings

FAPMI also experienced gains from Anduril and Databricks but saw performance drags from public companies Figma (-26.2%) and Chime (-23.6%). Unlike FPMI, which exits public companies after the first day of trading, FAPMI holds public companies through the lock-up period expiration. Figma received a tepid response from investors to its Q2 earnings results,3 meanwhile Chime continued to trade down after investors reacted negatively to its Q2 earnings released in August.4

Cybersecurity thematic basket also had solid gains, while Consumer brought up the rear

Outside of the Aerospace & Defense and AI thematic baskets, Cybersecurity (+21.2%) was another strong performer. Much of the gains were a result of Netskope’s IPO, whose shares returned 59.8% through the end of September.5 The only thematic basket that was negative in September was Consumer, which returned -0.1% for the month. Discord was the primary contributor to the basket’s negative performance, although the company’s -2.0% return for the month was modest and didn’t appear to be connected to any particular event.

 

Andrew Alden, CFA is Forge’s VP of Quantitative Research. These insights and more are provided monthly on LinkedIn.

1 Bloomberg, 09/08/2025

2 CNBC, 09/03/2025

3 CNBC, 09/04/2025

4 Forbes, 08/08/2025

5 Reuters, 09/17/2025

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About the Author

Andrew Alden, CFA, previously worked as the CIO of Semantiqa and as the Head of Quantitative Research at WeatherStorm Capital. With skills in asset and portfolio management, he brings a wealth of knowledge to his director role at Forge. Andrew has a Master of Financial Engineering from Haas School of Business, CA.

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