Secondary Spotlight: Private Company Investment Trends, Q2 2026

A Historic Start to 2026

The first half of 2026 brought record-breaking headline figures to the venture capital ecosystem, but a closer look reveals a private market defined by profound concentration. Global venture funding reached a spectacular $510 billion in the first half of 2026¹, outpacing the entirety of capital invested in 2025 and setting a new record for any half-year period.

In Q2 2026 alone, investors deployed $205 billion into more than 5,000 startups globally. While this marks a slight cooling from the historic $305 billion peak in Q1, Q2 still registers as the second-largest quarter for global venture investment on record¹. However, these massive numbers obscure an underlying reality: capital is concentrating into a select tier of elite AI foundation labs and mega-unicorns at an unprecedented scale, while the broader market continues to operate under tighter liquidity and funding constraints.

The Resurgence of Exits

For years, private market participants have waited for a meaningful return of liquidity. Q2 2026 started to deliver, registering one of the strongest exit periods for venture-backed companies since the 2021 boom.

Exit values for both initial public offerings (IPOs) and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reached historic highs. A total of 32 venture-backed companies went public at valuations exceeding $1 billion during the quarter¹. This was headlined by the historic public debut of SpaceX, which listed at a valuation of $1.77 trillion and raised $75 billion. Other high-profile market debuts included inference chipmaker Cerebras Systems and quantum computing firm Quantinuum.

The quarter also notched the largest startup acquisition in history. Less than a week after its IPO, SpaceX confirmed its intent to acquire Anysphere, the developer behind the AI coding assistant Cursor, for a staggering $60 billion. In total, 24 companies were acquired at or above a $1 billion valuation in Q2, yielding $113 billion in total M&A value¹.

The Reality of Capital Concentration

Despite these monumental exits, the defining feature of the current venture landscape remains extreme concentration across companies, sectors, and geographies. A striking 43% of all global startup funding in the first half of 2026 went to just two frontier AI players¹. This hyper-focus on AI is evident across the broader funding landscape. More than 70% of all global startup capital in Q2 was invested into AI-focused enterprises, a steep climb from just under 50% a year ago¹.

Furthermore, 16 companies raised rounds of $1 billion or more during the quarter, capturing 53% of all Q2 venture dollars¹. Geographically, the United States maintained its dominant position, capturing two-thirds of all global startup capital deployed in Q2.

Secondaries Step Up 

While the public markets are technically open for the largest companies, the recovery remains highly uneven. The venture market is currently operating in a state of contradiction. Beyond the massive AI labs and top-tier mega-deals, traditional late-stage software companies and mid-market startups face a highly selective fundraising environment. The IPO pipeline for average venture-backed startups remains narrow, leaving immense amounts of institutional and employee equity locked up in aging private companies².

Because traditional paths to liquidity remain restricted for the broader ecosystem, the private secondary market has become an increasingly vital release valve. In fact, secondaries are projected to reach $250 billion in volume in 2026. Secondaries allow companies to extend their private lifecycles comfortably, while offering early investors, founders, and employees a reliable mechanism to realize returns.

Below, we look at how these shifts in the broader venture market are directly impacting the private secondary market. We analyzed thousands of data points from EquityZen’s platform to break down the top trends driving market activity this quarter.

Investor Interest Accelerates

While public market investors evaluate a wave of highly anticipated mega-IPOs, private market participants are taking action now via the secondary market. Against this backdrop of massive primary funding rounds and a reopening exit environment, activity on the EquityZen platform remained robust in Q2.

Building on a strong start to the year, transaction count increased by 20.1% quarter over quarter, while investor indications of interest rose 19.7% quarter over quarter from Q1 to Q2 of 2026. We continue to see a surge in demand from investors looking to secure allocations in AI, deep tech, and physical infrastructure companies, a trend that directly mirrors the broader primary venture market.

The Space Economy Takes Orbit

While Artificial Intelligence continues its undisputed reign as the most popular industry amongst EquityZen investors, Q2 2026 brought a rotation into the space economy and physical hardware, pushing legacy software down the ranks.

• The Space Economy Dominates: Driven by macro momentum and mega-IPOs, space-related tech surged. Aerospace locked down the #2 spot for the third consecutive quarter, while Space Travel and Satellite Communications made top 10 debuts at #3 and #5, respectively.
• The Software Squeeze: As capital floods into physical infrastructure, digital-first categories are losing ground. Information Technology (IT) fell to its lowest rank in the past 2 years at #4, Fintech slipped to #6, and Enterprise SaaS dropped to #9. This illustrates a sharp decline in buyer appetite for traditional recurring-revenue models compared to hard-tech alternatives.
• Hardware In, Defense Out: Hardware debuted at #8, reflecting the intense need for physical components to power AI and advanced infrastructure. Manufacturing remained stable at #7, but Defense cooled significantly, dropping to #10 as investors likely redirected their infrastructure dollars toward the space sector.

The Picks, Shovels + Power Driving Q2 Demand

New Entrants to the Top 20: The Broadening Frontier

While established category leaders continued to absorb the bulk of secondary market interest, tracking the surge in new buyer Indications of Interest (IOIs) offers a clear window into where the venture market is heading next. In Q2 2026, a fresh cohort of companies cracked the Top 20 most popular list.

This quarter's new entrants reflect the macro transition away from traditional software and toward the physical economy, hard tech, AI infrastructure, and frontier science. Here are the standout companies capturing new investor demand:

1. The AI Hardware & Robotics Boom

As artificial intelligence transitions from software to physical actuation, secondary buyers are hunting for the hardware systems required to scale real-world automation.

• Figure AI (#12): This robotics company has seen growing investor demand as it transitions humanoid robots from science fiction to factory floors. Valued at roughly $39 billion following major funding rounds, Figure AI's strategic partnerships with top AI foundation labs and real-world deployments in major auto manufacturing facilities underscore the enormous market potential of autonomous physical labor. However, the humanoid robotics space is exceptionally capital-intensive and carries hardware execution risk.
• Project Prometheus (#13): The Jeff Bezos-founded company is ranked among the highest-valued active US unicorns with a staggering $41 billion post-money valuation. This highly secretive advanced manufacturing and AI/ML startup has captured significant market attention as investors eagerly pursue physical infrastructure applications for machine learning. While the opportunity is large, it is important to note that overhauling legacy heavy industry carries meaningful financial and operational risks.

2. The Data Infrastructure & Energy Bottleneck

• Redwood Materials  (#17): Founded by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, Redwood Materials is aggressively tackling the critical mineral and energy constraints created by massive AI data centers and the EV transition. The company's recent $6.3 billion valuation and new backing from tech giants like Google highlight the intense investor focus on battery recycling and grid-scale energy storage solutions. Battery recycling is fundamentally a complex business, requiring capital-intensive facilities and relying heavily on the volatile pricing of critical mineral commodities. This could impact the company’s ability to maintain competitive margins against traditional mining operations.
• Scale AI (#20): High-quality data remains the critical bottleneck for AI model training, and Scale AI aims to capitalize on this structural demand. As a foundational player in the AI/ML ecosystem, it represents the type of established infrastructure bet that secondary buyers are seeking, even after Meta’s acqui-hire last year. In a highly competitive market, Scale must consider the rapid advancement of synthetic data generation which could disrupt Scale’s core business model and squeeze future margins.
  

3. Frontier Science & Deep Tech

Investors are looking beyond traditional tech models toward extreme technological frontiers, indicating a high risk appetite for paradigm-shifting science.

• Neuralink (#16): Elon Musk's neurotechnology company has seen a spike in secondary interest. Pushing the absolute boundaries of neurological medicine with its brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, Neuralink proves that buyers are interested in deeply complex, highly regulated frontier sciences, viewing them as the next logical leap beyond the current tech cycle, despite the risks.

The entrance of these companies into the Top 20 most popular confirms that investors are increasingly interested in accessing the companies building the physical hardware, data scaling, and massive energy requirements necessary to sustain the current tech boom.

Companies on the Rise: Quarterly Movers

Beyond the most popular companies, a new list of up and comers is solidifying their position in the market. EquityZen’s "Quarterly Movers"³ tracks the private companies that experienced the largest surge in investor popularity quarter over quarter. In Q2 2026, the list highlights a decisive evolution in investor demand. While the top-line macro data shows massive capital concentration in foundational AI models, secondary buyers are actively hunting for the infrastructure, deep tech, and applied technologies that will power the next decade of growth.

Here is how the top movers break down by sector and theme:

1. The AI Infrastructure & Data Layer

As AI transitions from model training to real-world deployment, investors are aggressively targeting the underlying data and inference infrastructure required to make it run efficiently. ClickHouse (+261)⁴ and Neo4j (+108) both saw massive jumps in interest. ClickHouse provides the speedy online analytical processing (OLAP) databases needed for real-time reporting, while Neo4j’s graph database technology supports analysis of the highly connected data that powers modern AI systems and recommendation engines.

Baseten (+198) also surged, reflecting the growing demand for inference-first infrastructure that allows data scientists to deploy and scale machine learning models cost-effectively across cloud environments.

2. Climate Tech & The Energy Bottleneck

With the AI boom placing unprecedented strain on the electrical grid, energy and decarbonization tech dominated the top of the movers list. Plantd (+2992) took the number one spot by a massive margin. Founded by former SpaceX engineers, the company is radically shifting the homebuilding industry by producing carbon-negative, ultra-durable structural panels from fast-growing grass. SPAN (+1624) surged into second place. The company is reinventing the traditional electrical panel to automate home energy use, directly integrating solar, batteries, and EV charging into a home's infrastructure. Meanwhile, Aalo Atomics (+78) reflects the urgent need for new baseload power generation, drawing investor interest for its mass-manufactured, micro nuclear reactors designed specifically to power massive data centers.

3. Frontier Science & Deep Tech

Buyers are showing a growing appetite for hardware and hard-science innovation that leverages AI to solve complex physical and biological problems. Isomorphic Labs (+75), an Alphabet-backed DeepMind spinout, is using advanced machine learning to predict molecular interactions and accelerate drug discovery. NewLimit (+466), co-founded by Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, leverages AI for epigenetic reprogramming therapies aimed at extending human healthspan. Finally, Neura Robotics (+87) rounds out the deep tech surge, building "cognitive" collaborative robots that use integrated sensing and AI to operate alongside human workers.

4. Resilient Consumer Tech

While B2B and infrastructure dominated, established international consumer platforms still commanded secondary market attention. Rappi (+149), the Latin American "super-app," saw a notable jump. Its continued dominance in providing everything from on-demand delivery to financial services and e-commerce across the region makes it a highly sought-after asset for investors looking for mature, high-growth international exposure.

The Q2 2026 movers illustrate a clear narrative: secondary market investors are looking past the AI hype cycle and pricing in the physical and digital infrastructure required to sustain it.

Normalizing Discounts in a Bifurcated Market

The dynamic nature of the secondary market is perhaps most evident in pricing, which currently reflects a true "tale of two markets." In Q2 2026, the average transaction on EquityZen closed at a 38% discount to the company's last funding round. This represents a significant widening from the tight 8% average discount observed in Q1 2026, and puts pricing more in line with the averages we saw throughout late 2024 and 2025. Much of the Q1 tightening was driven by companies that have recently gone public and are therefore no longer commanding premiums in the private markets.

However, this platform-wide average obscures a sharply bifurcated reality. When we break down pricing by industry, the divide between the AI boom and the broader venture market becomes clear, as seen in EquityZen’s proprietary data.

• The AI Premium: While the broader market faces price compression, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML/Natural Language Processing) companies continue to defy gravity. A notable 62% of AI transactions in Q2 cleared at a premium relative to their last primary round. Secondary buyers are aggressively competing for allocations in frontier tech and infrastructure, driving up prices and proving that the "flight to quality" often means paying top dollar for category leaders.

• A SaaS recovery: Software companies made a notable comeback in Q2, with 29% trading at a premium to their last funding round. This marks a stark reversal from Q1 where no SaaS companies traded at a premium. While investors remain selective, Software companies that have successfully navigated an AI-driven market and can prove their competitive moat are commanding premiums.

• The Value Hunt: On the other end of the spectrum, traditional sectors continue to see significant markdowns. In Q2, 100% of transactions in FinTech, Healthcare, and Media cleared at a discount.

For disciplined investors, this environment presents a unique dual opportunity: the ability to back hyper-growth AI infrastructure companies where momentum is undeniably surging, alongside the chance to acquire fundamentally sound leaders in less buzzy industries at potentially attractive, heavily discounted entry points.

The Era of the Mega Unicorn

If there was any lingering doubt about capital concentration in the private markets, the breakdown of secondary transactions by company valuation puts it to rest. In 2026, buyer demand has aggressively polarized, heavily favoring the most massive, highly valued "mega unicorns" in the ecosystem.

Looking at the distribution of transaction volume by valuation bucket in Q2 2026, the shift is undeniable:

• The Decacorn Domination (>$20B): Transactions involving companies valued at greater than $20 billion dominated in the first half of the year. This tier captured a staggering 56.7% of volume in Q1 and 54.3% in Q2 2026. For context, from 2023 through the end of 2025, this top-tier bucket historically hovered between 18% and 42%. This surge underscores the intense market appetite for category leaders that are potentially marching toward highly anticipated liquidity events.
• The Squeezed Middle ($10B - $20B): As capital rushes to the very top, the "middle class" of late-stage decacorns is seeing a severe drop-off in secondary activity. Companies valued between $10 billion and $20 billion accounted for just 2.9% of transactions in Q2 2026 (and a mere 1.5% in Q1), down sharply from a peak of 25% in early 2024.
• The Stable Mid-Market ($5B - $10B): Meanwhile, the $5 billion to $10 billion bucket remains a surprisingly resilient pocket of the market, capturing 32.9% of transaction volume in Q2 2026. This indicates that while the absolute top-tier commands the majority of capital, there is still sustained, disciplined buyer interest in established unicorns that offer a balance of growth potential and more reasonable entry valuations.
• The Retreat from Early-Stage (<$5B): Companies valued at less than $5 billion captured just 10.00% of volume in Q2 2026 (and only 6% in Q1), a steep decline from the 20% to 36% ranges routinely seen throughout 2023 and early 2025 as more investors focus on larger, mature companies potentially closer to an exit.

Demand for Mature Assets

The data surrounding company age echoes what we see from a valuation perspective. Buyers, operating with a strict "flight to quality" mandate, are overwhelmingly prioritizing heavily de-risked, late-stage category leaders over younger, unproven ventures.

Looking at the breakdown for Q2 2026, the preference for mature assets remains deeply entrenched:

• The 10+ Year Dominance: Companies that have been operating for 10 or more years captured 75.7% of all transaction volume in Q2 2026. While slightly down from 77.5% in Q1 2026, this oldest cohort continues to dictate the vast majority of secondary market activity, as investors seek out scale, resilience, and a visible path to liquidity. Given the maturity of these companies they likely have the most seller interest as well as early investors and employees have held stock for a prolonged period.
• The 6–10 Year Sweet Spot: The mid-to-late stage bucket of 6-to-10-year-old companies accounted for 22.9% of Q2 volume, remaining relatively stable from Q1 (22.5%).
• The Retreat from Early-Stage: Startups 5 years old or younger accounted for a negligible 1.43% of Q2 transactions. While this is a slight uptick from the complete standstill in Q1 2026, it confirms that secondary buyers are almost entirely avoiding early-stage risk in the current climate. Young companies may also have less seller inventory, given most existing shareholder employees have not held their options long enough to meet the typical 4-year vesting schedule.

Combined, companies older than 6 years accounted for nearly 98.6% of all secondary transactions in Q2 2026. This overwhelming concentration directly reflects the macro reality of the broader exit market. With companies staying private longer, buyers are stepping in to absorb the supply of aging unicorns that possess the maturity and potential stability necessary to tap into the reopening IPO and M&A markets.

Looking Ahead to H2 2026

The first half of 2026 confirmed a structural evolution in the private market. While headline funding and mega-IPO values shattered records, the underlying venture ecosystem is sharply divided by sector, age, and valuation.

For buyers, the market offers a clear, dual-track opportunity. Investors are paying premiums to secure allocations in highly coveted $20B+ category leaders across space, defense, and AI infrastructure. Conversely, the rotation away from traditional tech has left mature Enterprise SaaS and Fintech companies trading at steep discounts, creating a potential value-investing environment for disciplined buyers.

For shareholders seeking liquidity, the traditional IPO pipeline is currently acting like a VIP room: accessible only to a narrow tier of generational outliers. With 98.5% of EquityZen’s volume consolidating into mature companies (6+ years old), the secondary market is now the primary liquidity engine. Sellers, especially those outside the AI and aerospace hype cycles, must remain realistic about valuation discounts to successfully unlock liquidity.

Ultimately, the secondary market is no longer a niche investment alternative; while not without risk, it is a vital liquidity and price-discovery mechanism for a venture ecosystem where companies are scaling larger and staying private longer.

Start exploring today.