For years, some of the biggest private technology companies have carried valuations that were set during the boom years of 2020 and 2021.
The companies kept growing. Revenue increased. Customers stayed. New products launched.
But in many cases, there was one thing that did not change: the valuation investors had last agreed to.
That is changing.
Miro’s agreement to be acquired by Bending Spoons for about $1.36 billion in enterprise value is one of the clearest examples yet of how dramatically private-market valuations have reset since the peak of the tech boom.
Miro was valued at $17.5 billion in January 2022.
The new deal represents roughly a 90% decline from that valuation.
And Miro is not the only story worth watching.
On the same day, Motive pulled its IPO registration after raising more than $1.3 billion privately. Fluidstack was reportedly in talks for a $5 billion Pentagon loan after recently raising money at a valuation above $18 billion. Harvey raised at $15.5 billion, while other companies continued to attract enormous amounts of capital.
Put together, these deals tell a more interesting story than simply “valuations are falling.”
Private markets are becoming much more selective about what deserves a high valuation, how those valuations are established, and when investors are willing to provide liquidity.
Miro’s $17.5 Billion Valuation Meets Reality
Miro raised $400 million at a $17.5 billion valuation in January 2022, near the end of one of the strongest periods for private technology valuations.
Four years later, Bending Spoons has agreed to acquire the collaboration-software company at an enterprise value of $1.355 billion.
Miro’s net cash brings the implied equity value to approximately $1.79 billion.
That is a huge gap.
But there is another important detail.
Miro is not being described as a company that stopped growing.
According to the source material, Miro now has approximately:
- $600 million in annual recurring revenue
- Nearly 90% of ARR from business and enterprise customers
- More than 750 customers paying over $100,000 annually
- Reported profitability
- Approximately $435 million in net cash
Based on those figures, the transaction values Miro at roughly 2.3 times ARR on an enterprise-value basis.
That is what makes the deal particularly interesting.
The company grew substantially from the business it was in 2022, yet the valuation attached to that business is dramatically lower.
The lesson is simple: growth alone does not guarantee that an old valuation will survive.
The Real Problem With Old Private Valuations
A private company’s last funding round can create the impression that its valuation is still valid long after the market has moved on.
If a company raises money at $10 billion and does not raise another priced round for several years, that $10 billion figure can remain the headline valuation.
But it may not be a price at which investors can actually buy or sell the company today.
Miro is a good example.
Its $17.5 billion valuation was established in 2022.
There was no subsequent priced round to reset that number.
The acquisition now provides a much more concrete reference point.
An actual transaction has replaced an old funding-round valuation.
That distinction matters enormously for private markets.
A valuation on a funding announcement tells you what investors agreed to at a particular point in time, under a particular set of terms.
An acquisition tells you what a buyer is willing to pay for the company under current conditions.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Bending Spoons Is Becoming Part of the Story
Miro is also the second collaboration-software company in five weeks to agree to sell to Bending Spoons at a steep discount to its previous primary valuation.
The first was Airtable.
Bending Spoons recently completed its acquisition of Airtable after agreeing to a deal at roughly $2.25 billion in equity value, around 81% below Airtable’s 2021 funding valuation.
The pattern is difficult to ignore.
Both companies:
- Raised money during the peak private-market environment
- Continued to grow
- Did not raise another priced round
- Carried their old valuations forward
- Eventually received new pricing through an exit
This is one of the clearest ways the private market can reset itself.
The valuation doesn’t necessarily collapse in one dramatic funding round. Sometimes it simply sits untouched until a transaction forces a new number onto the table.
But Miro’s Shareholders May Not Receive $1.79 Billion
There is an important distinction between the company’s headline equity value and what individual shareholders ultimately receive.
Miro’s implied equity value is approximately $1.79 billion, but that amount still has to move through the company’s capitalization structure.
That means shareholder proceeds can depend on:
- Liquidation preferences
- Preferred-share rights
- The company’s cap table
- The number and type of shares held
- Any other claims ahead of common shareholders
The source material notes that Miro’s liquidation stack has not been disclosed.
There is also a $295 million rollover, with certain Miro shareholders agreeing to invest part of their proceeds into newly issued Bending Spoons shares.
So this is not necessarily a straightforward “Miro was worth $1.79 billion, therefore every shareholder receives their proportional share” situation.
Private-market headline valuations can hide a lot of detail underneath.
Motive Chose a Very Different Path
Motive’s story provides an interesting contrast.
The company withdrew the S-1 it had filed for a potential New York Stock Exchange listing.
But it did not simply walk away from fundraising.
Instead, Motive secured more than $1.3 billion in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund.
The company said its ARR had crossed $600 million and was growing at around 30% annually.
Revenue from customers paying more than $100,000 had also increased by nearly 60%.
The valuation and terms of the financing were not disclosed.
That makes Motive particularly interesting alongside Miro.
The two companies have similar reported ARR and are from roughly the same vintage.
Yet they have taken completely different routes.
Miro is using an acquisition to establish a new reference price. Motive is using private capital to remain private.
Neither tells us that one path is automatically better.
But together, they show how companies are navigating a market where the public markets may not offer the valuation or timing they want.
The IPO Door Is Not Closed. It Is Just Not Always the First Choice
Motive said it remains positioned to pursue a public listing in the future.
That matters.
Withdrawing an S-1 does not necessarily mean a company has abandoned the IPO permanently.
It means the current registration process is ending.
Motive filed a Form RW, which is used to withdraw a registration statement before it becomes effective.
For the company, the decision provides more time and capital without forcing a public-market debut on an uncertain timetable.
For investors, however, it means the path to liquidity becomes less immediate.
If shareholders want liquidity before a future IPO or acquisition, they would need another private transaction or exit route.
That is the trade-off of staying private longer.
Then There Is Fluidstack
While Miro shows the downside of carrying an old valuation, Fluidstack represents a very different part of the private market.
The company recently raised $1.5 billion at a valuation above $18 billion, led by Jane Street.
Now, the Pentagon is reportedly in talks to lend Fluidstack roughly $5 billion.
The proposed funding would come from the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital and would support US supply-chain and manufacturing capacity for data-center components.
If completed, the loan would add another type of capital to Fluidstack’s existing financing structure.
This is important because the capital behind today’s AI infrastructure boom is becoming increasingly diverse.
It is no longer just venture capital.
Companies are drawing on:
- Venture funding
- Private equity
- Hyperscaler contracts
- Strategic investments
- Government-backed financing
The scale of the numbers shows just how capital-intensive AI infrastructure has become.
The Private Market Is Splitting Into Different Stories
This week’s deals make it harder to describe the private market with one simple narrative.
Some companies are seeing major valuation resets.
Others are raising at higher valuations.
Some are delaying IPOs.
Others are preparing to go public.
And some are attracting billions of dollars because investors believe they are positioned at the centre of the AI and infrastructure buildout.
Look at the range:
Miro: $17.5 billion old valuation → approximately $1.79 billion implied equity value in the acquisition.
Harvey: Raised $550 million at a $15.5 billion valuation, after reaching $11 billion earlier in 2026.
Fluidstack: Raised $1.5 billion at more than $18 billion and is reportedly pursuing another $5 billion in government-backed financing.
Ramp: Reportedly discussing a new round at around $60 billion, compared with $44 billion just three months earlier.
Mach Industries: Doubled its valuation to $3.7 billion only three months after its previous round.
These aren’t contradictory stories.
They show a market where capital is still available, but investors are becoming much more differentiated in where they put it.
AI and Deep Tech Are Getting the Attention
One of the biggest themes running through the funding data is the shift toward infrastructure and deep technology.
Stoke Space raised a $1 billion Series E first close, taking total funding to $2.3 billion.
Positron raised $875 million to develop inference silicon.
Kepler Computing has raised $468 million around technology aimed at addressing AI memory and chip bottlenecks.
Mach Industries raised $600 million to expand manufacturing capacity for defense systems.
And Dealroom data cited by the Financial Times puts investment into deep-tech companies outside AI at around $150 billion since the beginning of 2024.
That is more than the $133 billion invested across the entire decade through 2019.
The direction of capital is becoming clear.
Investors are looking beyond software applications and toward the physical infrastructure needed to build the next generation of technology.
Chips.
Energy.
Data centres.
Manufacturing.
Defense technology.
Space.
The AI boom is creating demand far beyond AI models themselves.
The Public Markets Are Still the Next Big Test
There is another piece of the puzzle that investors will be watching closely: the IPO market.
Anthropic’s S-1 had not appeared on EDGAR as of Thursday evening, although Reuters had reported that the filing could come in late September, with IPO marketing potentially beginning in mid-October at the earliest.
If major private companies begin entering the public markets again, investors will finally get more transparent price discovery.
That could be particularly important after years in which private companies were able to maintain valuations without frequent priced rounds.
Public listings force a different kind of accountability.
Revenue growth gets scrutinised.
Margins matter.
Cash flow matters.
Risk factors become public.
And ultimately, the market gets to decide what the company is worth every day.
Why the Fed Matters to Private Valuations
All of this is happening against a difficult macro backdrop.
The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.9%, its highest level since 2023, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s September 15-16 meeting.
Higher interest rates matter for private companies because they influence how investors value future growth.
When safer assets offer higher returns, investors can demand more from riskier assets.
That can put pressure on valuations, particularly for companies whose biggest promise lies several years in the future.
But the effect does not hit every company equally.
A profitable company with strong recurring revenue and major enterprise customers can look very different from an early-stage company that needs years of additional capital.
That is why the current private market is increasingly about quality of growth, profitability, capital intensity and strategic importance, rather than simply headline growth.
The Bigger Takeaway
Miro’s 90% valuation reset is not just a story about one collaboration-software company.
It is a reminder that private-market valuations eventually have to meet reality.
A valuation from 2021 or 2022 can remain on paper for years.
But eventually, a funding round, secondary transaction, acquisition or IPO creates a new reference point.
Miro just got one.
Motive chose to delay that moment.
Fluidstack is attracting capital at the other end of the spectrum.
Harvey and Mach Industries are seeing fresh valuation increases.
And companies across AI, chips, defense, space and infrastructure are still raising enormous sums.
So the private market is not simply collapsing.
It is repricing.
Some companies are being marked down sharply.
Others are being rewarded with higher valuations.
And increasingly, investors appear to be asking a more important question than “How fast are you growing?”
They want to know what that growth is actually worth.