Inside the Private Stock Market Boom: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI & the Rise of Secondaries

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All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg 39 min 6 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 3 months ago
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What is driving the boom in secondary markets?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:00
Everybody wants access to these private markets.
Kelly Rodriques 0:02
Joining us right now to discuss all of this is Kelly Rodriguez, the Forge CEO. We see a world where the private market opens up and is accessible to any U.S.

Why are companies choosing to stay private longer?

Kelly Rodriques 0:12
and global investor. There's 19 companies in the private market AI basket. These companies have grown on average 300 percent.
Gavin Baker 0:20
Please join us in welcoming Gavin Baker, managing partner and CIO of Atreides.
Chamath Palihapitiya 0:24
The ROI on AI has empirically, factually, unambiguously been positive.

How are SPVs and the Forge-Schwab deal impacting private market access?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:31
Investing is the search for truth. We welcome in Brad Gerstner. It's good to be back with you. You have a program called Invest America.

What role do secondary markets play in providing liquidity for VCs?

Brad Gerstner 0:38
I think we have a historic moment right now to get everybody into the game of capitalism.
Jason Calacanis 0:46
We have a few slides from Brad to kick this off. You know, let's get going. A little spicy thought starter.
Gavin Baker 0:52
Like old times, like old times. This panel, I actually was backstage. I said, Gavin, do you know we're talking about secondaries? He's like, what do you mean? And I said, okay. So here, let's just set this up for everybody. The room's full of people who are allocators. People are looking for distributions. So this is secondary markets over the course of the last decade. This is the amount of money going into VC each year, the amount of money coming out of VC each year.

Is there a bubble in the private market?

Gavin Baker 1:18
The red line represents the net effect of that. So, Chamath, we're in like five years, right, where a lot more is going in than is coming out. But the secondary market is at record volume. So this is, you know, I call these companies quasi-public companies. These are these later stage companies.

What are the hottest secondary companies currently?

Gavin Baker 1:35
There's buying and selling that's going on every day. Look at that, Jason, relative to the 21 peak. We thought that was crazy. At the end of 21, we're double that now in terms of secondary transactions. This is the amount of employee secondaries. So this is people buying into Anduril, Anthropic, SpaceX. Now represents 31% of all primary venture activity is buying into these secondaries in 2025. Secondaries are now competing with IPOs and acquisitions as the principal way that these guys are exiting. So I thought that was a decent setup to start the conversation this morning, just to level set how important secondaries have become. And then the final one is, Secondaries over the last couple of years were trading at a discount to market.
Gavin Baker 2:24
So if we wanted to sell shares in one of our companies, right, to buyers out there, they were willing to give us 80 cents on the dollar in order for us to get liquid so that we could send DPI back to our LPs. Today it's at 106, so a premium in the market as a Q125.
David Sacks 2:40
And this doesn't include some of the Wild West of SPVs that have been unraveled recently. Correct. people charging 10% load-in fees, double carry, and a lot of gray market, off-market stuff. This is also having a profound impact, Gavin, on employees at these companies that I wanna hear about because you've seen it up close and personal with SpaceX, and they have a very orderly process here. So why don't we start there? What impact is this having on the employees, Gavin, and then on the market, How orderly is this? And who are the buyers? Are the buyers the sucker at the table? Are these family offices, high net worth individuals who keep hearing us talk about Anthropic or SpaceX or Andrel and they just say, I have to own the name and they're not discerning.
David Sacks 3:33
So Gavin, maybe you could start about the impact on the SpaceX employees you saw firsthand, et cetera.
Chamath Palihapitiya 3:38
Maybe broadening beyond SpaceX, I do just think if companies are going to be staying private longer, this is absolutely necessary. I think there are a lot of people who are very wealthy on paper, but actually cash poor. And if you're making tremendous sacrifices, because you work for a company that you really believe in, and you're contributing a lot to that company, It's hard if you can't buy a nice house for your family. It's hard if you can't afford to do nice things.
David Sacks 4:12
Especially in year seven, eight, or nine of working at the company, and you tell your spouse we're worth 10 million on paper, 30 million on paper, and you don't own your home.

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