Happy Thursday. More big IPOs are coming, the SEC wants to open up private markets, private employment numbers fell, and industrial real estate is attracting investors. Let's dive in!
🎫 Register: For our next investor briefing focusing on the future of defense tech, looking at companies like Hadrian, Castelion, and Neros.
This issue is brought to you by The Champion Fund - structured access to the sports economy.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
🚀 POTENTIAL IPOS
The first half of the year has seen 58 VC-backed companies go public with valuations of $1 billion or more, more than double the 27 from H1 2025 and nearly matching 2025’s full-year total of 69. The companies have collectively raised $110 billion, and even removing SpaceX’s record-setting $75 billion IPO the remaining $35 billion dwarfs the $12.6 billion number from H1 2025. Crunchbase has listed eight notable startups most likely to go public the soonest, led by AI giant Anthropic, which is expected to go public in the next month or two. Before it does, we will be holding an investor briefing to break it down, currently scheduled for early October.
➨ TAKEAWAY: While Anthropic is primed to perhaps break SpaceX’s record for the biggest IPO in history, other big names are worth watching as well. Crunchbase mentions Oura, Notion, Stripe, Kraken, SambaNova, Stegra, and OpenEvidence, and our investor briefing last month took an in-depth look at OpenAI and Databricks. Shares of many of the aforementioned companies can be bought on secondary markets right now, but be sure to do your research. An IPO is no guarantee of gains, and most shares bought now would be subject to a lockup period after the business goes public.
Partner
The Sports Asset Class, Structured for Your Portfolio
The Champion Fund is an SEC-registered interval fund providing structured access to a managed portfolio across five verticals of the global sports economy.
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📺 UPCOMING EVENT
Join Vincent’s Slava Rubin and Sacra’s Marcelo Ballve for a closer look at the private companies driving the next generation of defense technology. We’ll explore startups across AI, autonomous systems, drones, advanced aerospace, and next-generation hardware, examining where innovation is accelerating, which companies are gaining traction, and what investors should watch as defense spending and strategic competition reshape the market.
Thursday September 17 at 11 AM ET
📰 NOTABLE NEWS
💵 SEC expanding investor access: The SEC is proposing new rules and regulations that would expand retail investor access to private markets via registered funds. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has made it a priority to broaden access to private markets, and this proposal is a big step in that direction.
📊 ADP employment report: Private companies added 38,000 jobs in August in the U.S., down from July’s revised total of 47,000 and below expectations. The count was the lowest rate of growth since January, and could be indicating a slowing labor market. Friday’s U.S. jobs report will provide a further data point.
🏢 Industrial investment rising: There was $33 billion invested in the industrial real estate sector in Q2, an annual gain of 28%, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth. Total commercial real estate investment was up 20% year-over-year, with retail and office also seeing double-digit gains, but multifamily activity staying flat.
🤖 Cognition fundraise: The AI coding startup Cognition is finalizing its $1 billion funding round, now reportedly at a valuation of $47 billion, up from previous reports that pegged it at $40 billion. Either way, it is a significant increase over its $26 billion valuation just four months ago.
🪙 Hyperliquid and Kraken: The decentralized crypto exchange Hyperliquid is reportedly in discussions with U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken's parent company, Payward, to bring perpetual futures trading to U.S. users. If the agreement is approved by the CFTC, Americans would then be able to easily trade Hyperliquid-based derivatives, which would be a boon for both Hyperliquid and Kraken.
🏡 School zone importance: The median cost of a home in highly rated U.S. public school are 35% more than the typical U.S. home, but there are metro areas such as Little Rock, Anaheim, and Charleston, where the premium is much less.
🤖 AI CORNER
Combine AI’s rapid progression with the fact that many Americans live their lives digitally and you get a technology that can now be used to create highly detailed dossiers on ordinary citizens. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are concerned about these capabilities, which could be used by anyone looking to “blackmail, coerce or stalk” other people. AI-assisted surveillance has also come to the forefront over the past few weeks as the backlash grows towards Flock cameras, which are AI-assisted automatic license plate readers. The cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states and a number of cities and counties have cancelled their contracts. While there are certainly cases where intelligence-level dossiers and surveillance tools can be useful, the real concern is how this technology can be abused by those in charge of it. Right now there are very few regulations, as the law has not caught up to AI’s capabilities - but it is clear that new laws and policies need to be developed, sooner rather than later.
