Good day. The battle for the digital architecture of secondary markets has begun. Two major industry moves last week signaled a shift from isolated brokerages or ad hoc trades to centralized technology infrastructure.
Carta, an equity management platform, announced a partnership with NewView Capital, a venture firm specializing in late-stage secondaries, to combine a built-in capital provider with its technology to process company-led tender offers. And Hiive, a secondary marketplace for shares in private startups, rebranded itself as Clarity as it expands into financial services for secondary issuers, institutional investors and portfolio managers.
Both announcements address a bottleneck in private markets: the lack of standardized, streamlined workflows for secondary transactions. Secondary demand has surged as investors pursue shares of hot AI startups before they go public.
Rohin Shah, head of strategic partnerships at Carta, said the company's deal with NewView can help set up a tender offer and fill gaps for private companies without investor relations teams or ready buyers. Carta and NewView hope to offer "tender-in-a-box," Shah said.
Carta said it facilitated $3 billion in volume across more than 70 tender offers in the first six months of 2026, the strongest first half in the company's history. Most of these tender offers allow employees and early investors to sell shares at a company-approved price during a set period.
With its rebranding, Clarity is also betting on the services that bring customers to its secondary trade technology. Sim Desai, Clarity's CEO, says his company's tech stack-designed to be an "infrastructure-as-a-service" for private markets-is taking aim at the $20 trillion addressable market across private capital that includes issuers, shareholders, institutional investors and venture-fund partners.
Top News
Looking-glass future. AI biosecurity startup Red Queen Bio is rushing to design antibodies that can be manufactured to protect against a range of potential pathogens, including the seemingly sci-fi threat of an AI-designed virus. The company, in which OpenAI is a lead investor, says it has raised $36 million. Human clinical trials of its antibody drugs against bird flu and other viruses in the flu family are planned for next year.
Energy-Focused EIG Raises Its Bets on the Small but Growing Geothermal Sector
Veteran specialist investment firm EIG Global Energy Partners is betting on the nascent geothermal sector with plans to raise as much as $225 million for a new fund to help project developers implement new methods to extract hot fluid from subterranean depths and turn it into power. The Washington-based energy-infrastructure firm, which so far has raised roughly $150 million for EIG Geothermal Catalyst Partners, has already backed its first deal from the fund. In August it invested in Power Planet, which is developing the Star Peak geothermal project in Nevada.
Blackstone's Top Private-Equity Executive Is Preparing to Leave Firm
Blackstone's top private-equity executive, Joseph Baratta, is preparing to leave the firm, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a series of departures by senior leaders from the private-investment giant. Senior executives at Blackstone have long faced the reality that Jonathan Gray, the firm's 56-year-old president, is expected to succeed CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Schwarzman, 79 years old, co-founded Blackstone in 1985. That leaves few paths for growth for someone as senior as Baratta, 55.
Industry News
People
AI inference startup Baseten appointed Sheila Vashee as chief marketing officer. She most recently served as CMO at Figma.
Omers Ventures appointed Laura Lenz as managing director, head of ventures.
StayTerra, a vacation-rental-management brand platform, named Jordi Mena as chief financial officer, Kyle Utley as chief technology officer and Patrick Noonan as vice president of business development.
AI cloud startup Lightning AI appointed Heather Paduck as chief financial officer, Betty Junod as chief marketing officer and Jarlath Doherty as chief people officer.
New Money
Tekever, a developer of AI-powered autonomous systems, held the first close of its $580 million Series D round, valuing the company at $6.4 billion. UC Investments and Baillie Gifford led the investment.
Precision Neuroscience, a New York-based brain-computer interface technology startup, scored $250 million in Series D funding from investors including Pershing Square Holdings, Ackman Oxman Institute, JSL Health Capital and others.
BigHat Biosciences, a San Mateo, Calif.-based protein therapeutics platform startup, closed a $75 million Series C round co-led by DFJ Growth and Premji Invest.
Morphotonics, a nanoimprinting technology startup based in the Netherlands, raised more than EUR40 million in Series B funding from investors including 3M Ventures and Innovation Industries.
Ando, a San Francisco-based messaging platform for teams working alongside AI agents, picked up $20 million in seed funding from Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence.
IPID, a payment intelligence technology startup with offices in Singapore and New York, secured $16 million in Series A funding led by Foundation Capital.
Outerlimit, the developer of a decentralized security and authorization layer for agentic AI, emerged from stealth with $16 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Evolution Equity Partners and Crane Venture Partners. The company has offices in London and New York.
Mesa Quantum, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup developing quantum sensing technology, landed an $11.8 million investment led by Playground Global.
Autoheal, a San Francisco-based platform offering AI agents that handle repetitive post-coding jobs, was seeded with a $7.9 million investment. Innovation Endeavors led the funding, which included participation from Emergent Ventures, U&I Ventures and others.
Blair Health, a Toronto-based women's health startup providing specialist-level care, nabbed 4.2 million Canadian dollars (about $3 million) in pre-seed funding. Business Development Bank of Canada's Thrive Venture Fund and Accelia Capital were among the investors.
Tech News
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Cracks in Oracle's AI Data-Center Build-Out Appear in Massive New Mexico Project
How to Know When the AI Boom Is About to Go Bust
Middle-Schoolers Are Seeking Out AI Friends Instead of Real Human Ones
We All Hated Busy Work. Now That It's Disappearing, It Turns Out We Miss It.
Benjamin Rosen, Who Persuaded Wall Street to Take PCs Seriously, Dies at 93
The WSJ Pro VC Team
This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.
Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com
The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Sarah Klearman.
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