Private Markets 2H26: Liquidity Infrastructure Moves From Nice-to-Have to Core

AdValorem Research

Private markets have entered the second half of 2026 with a clearer signal: liquidity is increasingly being manufactured, not assumed. As the public IPO window reopens unevenly, the private ecosystem is leaning harder on secondaries—both in single-name shares and in fund stakes—to bridge the timing gap between venture-scale growth and public-market readiness.

Over the first half of the year, Nasdaq Private Market’s proprietary tracker for large private names delivered outsized performance versus major public benchmarks, while also underscoring why employees and early investors continue to seek structured liquidity programs rather than wait for a broad-based IPO cycle to return (Nasdaq Private Market).

1) Secondary performance is doing two jobs at once: price discovery and patience

In 2022–2024, a common narrative was that private valuations were “stale.” In 2026, the more useful question is whether the market has enough transaction frequency to produce credible reference points. Nasdaq Private Market reports its private market index was up sharply in 1H26 (and that private-market outperformance accelerated around the late-February Iran war shock, when public markets pulled back) (Nasdaq Private Market).

That matters because price discovery is not just a vanity metric—it directly affects compensation, retention, employee liquidity, and how boards think about timing a public listing. If the secondary tape can produce actionable “clearing levels,” companies can run orderly liquidity programs without forcing a premature IPO.

2) The IPO window is improving, but still selective—so secondaries remain the release valve

Nasdaq Private Market describes the 2026 IPO market as gradually reopening, but still “highly selective,” and “far from” the broad issuance environment of 2021 (Nasdaq Private Market). The implication is straightforward: the most mature private companies may want the option of listing, but they also need a credible interim path for employee and early-investor liquidity.

In that environment, secondaries function less like a niche market and more like core infrastructure. They help management teams avoid the binary decision of “IPO now or do nothing.”

3) A key 2026 shift: liquidity demand is broadening from single-name shares into fund stakes

On July 21, Nasdaq Private Market announced it is acquiring Nasdaq’s fund secondaries business (NFS), expanding its platform to include liquidity transactions across both direct company shares and multi-asset fund stakes (Nasdaq Private Market announcement (syndicated)). In the same announcement, NPM cites an industry estimate that global secondary volume grew 53% in 2025 to roughly $233 billion, split almost evenly between LP-led and GP-led activity, with GP-led activity rising from less than 20% a decade ago to nearly half today (Nasdaq Private Market announcement (syndicated)).

For practitioners, this matters because the constraint is no longer “are there buyers?” but “can liquidity be offered in the exact form the seller needs?” Some holders want exposure to one marquee private name; others want to reduce overall private-market duration risk without selling every position. A platform that can support both share and fund liquidity is a bet that demand is shifting toward portfolio-level liquidity management.

4) Data transparency is becoming a competitive feature, not a nice-to-have

Private markets historically lacked the “daily tape” that public investors take for granted. Nasdaq Private Market’s Tape D offering positions itself as a dataset spanning pricing, financing, ownership, and analytics, including daily pricing for 500+ liquid private names and tracking of firmographic/financing/ownership data on 4,000+ venture-backed private companies (Nasdaq Private Market).

The significance is not the exact product packaging—it’s the direction of travel. If more market participants converge on shared reference points (prices, financing history, 409A marks, bid/offer histories), then private valuations become more contestable. That can compress the “information premium” historically earned by the best-connected intermediaries and shift advantage toward platforms that combine execution with credible data.

5) Premiums are not uniform—liquidity is concentrating in the names with real scarcity value

Forge’s July IPO pipeline outlook adds useful color on how premiums are evolving in practice. Forge reports that median trade premiums reached 0% in June—the first time since February 2022 that median trade premiums matched the last primary round price—while the upper end of the distribution remained elevated (its 90th percentile trade premium is cited at 79% in June) (Forge Global).

Read plainly: in the “typical” private company, secondaries may clear near the last primary valuation, but in a smaller set of scarce, high-demand names, buyers still pay up substantially for access. That pattern is consistent with a market that is more selective—but also more functional—than the blanket discounting narrative of 2023.

What this means for how we track pre-IPO markets

At AdValorem, we view the current cycle as a transition from valuation by headline to valuation by mechanism. Companies that can offer controlled liquidity—through structured programs, periodic tender events, or platform-facilitated settlement—can keep talent aligned and cap tables stable while they wait for the right listing window. Meanwhile, the expansion of fund secondaries and the mainstreaming of private-market data products suggest the next frontier is not just more liquidity, but more transparent liquidity.

Research takeaway: Watch for second-half 2026 milestones that signal market maturation: broader adoption of standardized settlement rails, more repeatable liquidity programs at late-stage companies, and tighter dispersion between primary-round pricing and credible secondary clearing levels. Those are the indicators that the pre-IPO market is becoming an investable “market,” not merely a collection of one-off transactions.