Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Why the exploding secondaries market is hard to pin down

Secondaries are an elephant-sized black box.

The market is mammoth, expanding, and—here’s the kicker—we have no clue how big it really is. The secondaries market has exploded in recent years, driven by a simple problem: companies are staying private longer, exits have dried up, and investors need inventive ways to return cash to their LPs.

New PitchBook data estimates that, in 2025, somewhere between $62.5 billion and $120.9 billion were traded in U.S. direct secondaries. Now, $58 billion-plus is a helluva range, but more importantly: that’s a margin of error larger than many markets. (The worldwide total addressable market for, say, soap is around $50 billion.) One point of comparison: $50 billion was the volume for all of 2024.

PitchBook has good reason for keeping its estimates broad. The secondaries market, as big as it’s gotten, is structurally opaque. There are a few rules that force disclosure and investors—frequently small firms and wealthy individuals—often buy shares with incomplete information. The FOMO logic isn’t all that different from public markets. If you like OpenAI, you want a piece of it—it’s the same as someone buying Disney stock because they believe in the name.

The difference, of course, is that nothing is publicly reported. Some deals get done through large institutions (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Charles Schwab all did 2025 acquisitions to bolster their secondary operations). Those Wall Street-funneled deals are for the big fish—if you fancied a few-hundred-million-dollar stake in a company like Anduril. But much of the market runs through smaller operations, sometimes just one or two people, brokering deals for buyers looking to put in a couple hundred thousand.

And this is where the market grows lopsided, as everyone chases a handful of companies. PitchBook points out that the top 20 startups on private stock marketplace Hiive accounted for an astonishing 86.4% of secondary trading value in the fourth quarter of 2025. The top five (names like OpenAI and SpaceX) accounted for 55.6% of that volume.

So, how big is the secondary market? What can we actually know right now? PitchBook goes straight to the midpoint of that range, $91.7 billion, then adds their estimate for GP-led venture secondaries volume, $14.6 billion. That gets the 2025 market for U.S. venture secondaries to $106.3 billion.

And that’s almost definitely conservative. We’ve lost track of an elephant.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Humand, a San Francisco-based developer of an AI operating system for remote workers, raised $66 million in Series A funding. Kaszek and Goodwater Capital led the round and was joined by Y Combinator and others.

- Subject, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based AI-powered curriculum platform for students, raised $28 million in funding. Vistara Growth led the round and was joined by NextEquity Partners, Green Street Impact Partners, Outcomes Collective, and existing investors.

- Hypercore, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based loan management platform for private credit funds, raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. Insight Partners led the round.

- Coral Care, a Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.‑based platform for in‑home pediatric speech, occupational, and physical therapy, raised $13 million in Series A funding. Haymaker Ventures led the round and was joined by FCA Ventures and Peterson Ventures.

- Giant, a San Francisco-based interactive storytelling platform for children, raised $8 million in seed funding. Matrix, Decasonic, and Griffin Gaming Partners led the round and were joined by Perceptive Ventures, Flex Capital, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, and LightShed Ventures.

- General Magic, a Toronto, Canada-based developer of agentic AI technology designed for insurance workflows, raised $7.2 million in funding. Radical Ventures led the round and was joined by a16z Speedrun and others.

- 7Rivers, a Milwaukee, Wis.-based technology services company that helps enterprises use data and AI via the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Inoca Capital Partners led the round.

- Sherpas, a San Francisco‑based AI platform for wealth management advisors, raised $3.2 million in seed funding. 1248 led the round and was joined by AUA Private Equity Capital, GoHub Ventures, and others.