Private-market sentiment appears to be improving.
Forge’s latest data shows that the median secondary-market trade reached par with the company’s last primary funding round in June, the first time that has happened since early 2022.
At first glance, that sounds like a broad recovery in private-company valuations.
But there is an important catch.
The median tells only part of the story.
A closer look at the data shows a growing divide between companies that have recently raised money at higher valuations and companies that have not raised a new round in years.
And SambaNova is probably the clearest example of why this matters.
The headline: private shares are trading closer to their last funding price
For years, secondary-market buyers have demanded steep discounts to the valuations companies received in their last funding rounds.
That made sense in a market where private-company valuations had fallen sharply from their 2021 peaks.
But Forge’s data suggests the environment has changed.
In June, the median secondary trade was at par with the company’s last primary round.
In July, the median moved to a 7% discount.
Compare that with 2023, when the median discount was around 50%.
So yes, buyers are clearly more willing to transact closer to recent primary-round valuations.
But there is another number worth paying attention to.
The bottom of the market still looks very different
In July:
- Median discount: 7%
- 25th percentile: 34% discount
- 10th percentile: 57% discount
That means the typical company may be trading close to its latest funding valuation, while a meaningful group of companies is still trading at very large discounts.
So the private market isn’t recovering uniformly.
Some companies have reset their valuations higher.
Others are still carrying old valuations from 2021 or 2022.
And that difference is becoming increasingly important.
SambaNova shows how the reference price can change everything
SambaNova’s recent funding history is a great example.
The company was valued at approximately $5.1 billion in its Series D in 2021.
By February 2026, it raised a $350 million Series E at a reported valuation of around $2.2 billion.
Then came a dramatic change.
In July, SambaNova announced the first close of a $1 billion Series F at an $11 billion post-money valuation.
That’s a massive jump from the February valuation.
And it had a major impact on Forge’s pricing data.
SambaNova’s Forge Price rose 142.9% in July, making it the biggest mover in Forge’s private-market index for the month.
It contributed 6.5 percentage points to an equal-weighted index that rose 9.3%.
But here’s the interesting part.
Imagine the same SambaNova secondary share being valued at $2 billion.
Depending on which funding round you compare it against, the discount looks completely different:
- Compared with the 2021 Series D at $5.1 billion, it is roughly a 61% discount
- Compared with the 2026 Series E at $2.2 billion, it is roughly a 9% discount
- Compared with the 2026 Series F at $11 billion, it becomes an 82% discount
The underlying secondary price has not changed in this example. The reference valuation has.
That is an important distinction when looking at private-market pricing.
So, did private-market valuations really recover?
Partly. But the answer is more complicated than the headline suggests.
When a company raises a new round, its valuation gets a fresh reference point.
A company that last raised money in 2021 may still be compared with a valuation from five years ago.
Another company that raised in 2026 has a much more recent price discovery event.
This creates what is known as a vintage effect.
Forge’s data makes this very clear.
Companies whose most recent primary round was in 2026 traded at no median discount.
For companies last priced in:
- 2025: 4.7% discount
- 2022: 54.1% discount
- 2021: 59.1% discount
The gap is enormous.
But it does not necessarily mean that every 2021 company is worth 59% less than its last funding valuation.
It tells us that companies with older reference prices are being treated very differently from companies that have recently raised capital.
The companies that can raise are resetting their valuations
This is probably the most important part of the story.
PitchBook analyst Emily Zheng put it simply: companies that cannot raise on strong terms generally aren’t raising at all.
That creates a selection effect.
Companies that are doing well and can attract fresh capital get a new valuation.
Companies that are struggling to raise remain stuck with their old reference price.
So when the market looks at the median discount, it is looking at a group that is increasingly made up of companies with recent financing events.
That can make the overall market appear healthier than the entire private-company universe actually is.
Think about two companies
Company A
- Raised in 2026
- Strong investor demand
- New valuation established
- Secondary shares trade close to the new round
Company B
- Last raised in 2021
- Hasn’t raised another round
- Investors have limited fresh information
- Secondary shares trade at a large discount
Both companies are part of the private market.
But their pricing dynamics are completely different.
That is why the median and the tail need to be looked at together.
AI is driving a lot of the repricing
There is another major factor behind the recent numbers.
AI companies are attracting a disproportionate share of private-market capital.
PitchBook reported that companies in the AI sector accounted for 86% of dollars deployed in the first half of the year.
At the same time, deals of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5% of the $412.7 billion deployed during the first half.
That matters because some of the biggest valuation resets are happening in AI.
SambaNova is one example.
The broader AI market has also seen significant step-ups in later funding rounds.
This creates a situation where large, well-funded AI companies can pull market statistics higher while many older private companies continue to trade at substantial discounts.
The private market isn’t one market anymore. It is increasingly a collection of very different pockets.
What happened to companies like Airtable, Postman and Tanium?
The July data gives us another useful perspective.
Some of Forge’s biggest detractors did not have fresh 2026 funding rounds.
Among them:
- Airtable: down 24.5%
- Postman: down 24.9%
- Tanium: down 12.8%
Airtable’s last priced funding round was in December 2021.
Postman’s was in August 2021.
That is important because these companies are still being viewed against much older reference valuations.
Airtable is an especially interesting example.
Its reported sale valuation of approximately $2.25 billion was significantly below its 2021 financing valuation.
At the same time, the company had reported approximately $480 million in ARR and revenue growth above 20%.
The takeaway isn’t that the company was necessarily overvalued or undervalued.
It is that operating performance and private-market valuation can move in very different directions.
The top of the market is cooling too
The shift isn’t happening only among companies at the bottom.
Forge’s July data showed that the premium at the top end of the distribution also came down.
The 75th percentile premium fell from 23% to 7%.
The 90th percentile premium fell from 79% to 27%.
Meanwhile, the 10th-percentile discount widened from 50% to 57%.
The median barely moved.
That creates an interesting picture.
The middle remained relatively stable while both ends moved closer to the center.
Some companies that had been trading significantly above their last funding rounds cooled off.
At the same time, some older companies continued to trade at deeper discounts.
This is consistent with a market that is becoming more selective rather than simply moving uniformly higher.
Don’t confuse an IOI with an actual transaction
There is another important point when looking at private-market pricing.
An indication of interest, or IOI, is not the same thing as a completed trade.
An IOI is essentially a non-binding expression from a potential buyer or seller saying:
This is the price and quantity at which I may be willing to transact.
The transaction may never actually happen.
This matters because private-company shares don’t trade as frequently as public stocks.
There may be very few completed transactions available for a particular company.
As a result, pricing models can incorporate other market signals, including IOIs.
Forge says its Forge Price incorporates primary-round pricing and secondary transactions, including indications of interest, and may sometimes rely on a limited number of inputs.
So a quoted private-company price should not automatically be interpreted as an executable market price.
It is better thought of as an estimate based on the available market information.
Buyers are becoming less dominant
Forge also reported an interesting change in marketplace activity.
Buy-side IOIs represented 48% of new and updated IOIs in July, down from 57% in June.
It was the first month since late 2023 in which buyers were no longer the majority of marketplace interest.
Forge interprets this as shareholders becoming more willing to explore liquidity as sentiment improves.
There is another possible interpretation.
Some shareholders may simply be responding to the repricing happening across the market.
If a company has just raised at a new valuation, existing shareholders suddenly have a fresh reference point against which they can consider selling.
For investors, this is another reminder that market activity can tell you something about sentiment, but it doesn’t tell you the whole story.
Three things investors should look at
If you’re tracking private-market opportunities, looking at the headline discount alone isn’t enough.
1. Always look at the valuation vintage
A 5% discount to a 2026 funding round and a 55% discount to a 2021 funding round are very different situations.
The age of the reference valuation matters.
Ask:
When was the company last priced?
That question can be just as important as:
What discount am I getting?
2. Look at the company’s latest financing
A new funding round can completely change the picture.
SambaNova went from a reported $2.2 billion valuation in February to an $11 billion valuation in July.
That is a dramatic change in the reference price.
But it also raises another question:
Why did the valuation change so dramatically?
A new round tells you what investors were willing to pay at that particular point in time. It does not guarantee that the same valuation will hold in a future financing or liquidity event.
3. Separate market price from business fundamentals
A private-company share can trade at a discount because:
- The last funding valuation was too high
- The company has slowed down
- Investors are demanding more liquidity
- The reference valuation is stale
- The company has not raised fresh capital
- There are limited buyers
- The market has changed since the last round
Sometimes several of these factors are happening at once.
The discount itself doesn’t tell you which one is responsible.
The bigger picture
The private market is clearly showing signs of improvement.
Buyers are more willing to transact around recent funding valuations.
The median discount has fallen dramatically from the levels seen during the 2023 downturn.
But that doesn’t mean the entire private market has recovered.
A large part of the improvement is concentrated among companies that have recently raised capital, particularly in AI.
Companies that haven’t raised a new round remain much further away from their previous valuations.
That is why the 7% median discount in July should be read alongside the 34% discount at the 25th percentile and the 57% discount at the 10th percentile.
The median tells us that the typical traded company was close to its latest funding price.
The tail tells us that there is still significant stress underneath the surface.
And SambaNova demonstrates just how much a new financing round can change the numbers.
What should we watch next?
The next few months could tell us whether this is the beginning of a broader recovery or simply a repricing of the most investable private companies.
A few things are worth watching:
Will more 2021 and 2022 companies raise new rounds?
If they do, their reference valuations will reset and we may see the distribution of discounts change significantly.
Will the gap between the median and the bottom 10% narrow?
That would be a stronger sign that the recovery is spreading beyond recently funded companies.
Will AI continue to attract the majority of private-market capital?
If capital remains concentrated in AI, aggregate private-market statistics may continue to be driven disproportionately by a relatively small group of companies.
And perhaps most importantly, will secondary-market prices translate into actual transactions?
Because an indication of interest is just that: an indication.
Until a trade actually happens, the quoted price remains an estimate of what someone may be willing to pay.
The takeaway
Private-market valuations are improving, but don’t mistake a better median for a broad-based recovery.
The companies raising fresh capital are getting new reference prices.
The companies that cannot raise remain tied to older valuations and continue to trade at deeper discounts.
For investors looking at private-market opportunities, the most useful question may therefore not be:
“What discount am I getting?”
It may be:
“Discounted against what, and how recently was that valuation established?”
That context can make a 5% discount look very different from a 55% discount.