Secondary market boom in 2025 reshapes private–public exit landscape

Last year marked a turning point for secondary transactions in venture and growth capital as a once-marginal source of liquidity moved into the mainstream of exit activity. Secondary sales expanded rapidly in 2025, closing the gap with IPOs and reshaping how investors and companies think about the private–public boundary.

Industry figures show the secondary market reached unprecedented scale in 2025. According to UBS, global secondary volume topped $200 billion for the first time, with GP-led deals rising to about $104 billion and LP-led transactions near $118 billion. That jump represented a substantial year‑on‑year increase and set expectations for continued growth into 2026. Data from Raison similarly highlights secondaries as a material exit channel, reporting roughly $94.9 billion in combined value over the prior 12 months, on par with traditional IPOs and M&A exits.

Venture-focused metrics tell the same story. Axios reported that in the 12 months to June 2025, venture secondary transactions reached $61.1 billion, slightly eclipsing IPO liquidity during a period when public listings were scarce. PwC’s outlook for US capital markets noted vigorous exit activity overall, driven in part by AI‑themed deals and an increase in earlier‑stage M&A, underscoring a broader rebound in dealmaking. Moonfare adds that private equity exits also revived in 2025, with US exit value rising sharply as a handful of very large transactions concentrated much of the gain.

What has changed is not only scale but composition. Secondary buyers have shifted away from searching for deeply discounted, distressed positions and toward concentrated stakes in the most sought‑after companies. Market participants are paying premiums to access shares in widely desired names rather than picking over neglected assets. That dynamic has created a narrower investible universe within secondaries, buyers are competing for positions in roughly the same two dozen firms that dominate attention and capital.

This concentration reflects a convergence of incentives. High‑quality private companies increasingly prefer to remain outside public markets, where regulatory disclosure, quarterly pressure and other frictions can be intrusive. At the same time, long‑dated private investors and employees seeking interim liquidity need options short of an IPO. Secondaries and tender offers have scaled up to meet that demand: UBS’s numbers and other industry tallies show tender offers in 2025 reached levels approaching prior peaks seen during the era of very low interest rates.

The result is a feedback loop that strengthens private markets’ advantages. As secondary activity deepens, private capital becomes more attractive for companies that value flexibility, and secondary investors gain privileged access to the most promising growth stories. That does not mean public markets are obsolete; rather, public and private capital are redefining the terms of competition for deal flow and for company exits.

Yet important caveats remain. Even after last year’s expansion, secondaries still represent a modest share of the overall asset base managed by venture and private equity, only a few percentage points of the aggregate value under management. The market’s growth has also been uneven geographically and sectorally: Chambers’ practice guide and other reports note regional disparities, with valuations rising in the US and Europe while parts of Asia lagged. Moreover, Moonfare’s account of 2025 shows that much of private markets’ headline recovery was driven by a small number of mega‑exits, a reminder of concentration risk at the top end.

For limited partners and fund managers, the evolution presents both opportunity and complication. Secondaries offer a versatile tool for portfolio rebalancing, liquidity management and selective exposure to late‑stage winners. But the premium prices and crowding around the hottest names mean that return expectations, fee structures and governance implications must be reassessed. As Raison observes, secondaries are being used more deliberately as a portfolio management technique rather than as a last resort.

Policymakers and public market participants face choices as well. If private capital continues to supply large volumes of flexible capital with fewer reporting requirements, public markets will need to sharpen their comparative advantages , better price discovery, deeper trading liquidity and the accountability that comes with broader ownership , to remain competitive for late‑stage companies considering a listing.

The broad trajectory is clear: secondary markets have matured from a niche adjunct into a structural component of the exit ecosystem. Whether that development produces a healthier overall capital markets architecture will depend on how investors, companies and regulators adjust to a landscape where private liquidity is deeper, more accessible, and increasingly concentrated on a small number of high‑quality issuers.