Q3 2025 Venture Market Insights

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IPOs kept rolling along in Q3 boosting secondary demand.

A number of notable IPOs came to market in Q3 including Klarna, Netskope and Figma. Though the results were mixed with some doing  better than others since IPO, it still helped boost secondary demand with bids climbing to 40% of total observed volume (vs 36% in previous quarter).

High levels of concentration remains.

Most of the activity in terms of count and overall volume is still concentrated in the top names. The dispersion into the broader market remains slow, despite increasing interest in names with upcoming IPO potential. AI (both on the LLM and on the infra side) continues to attract a great deal of activity and interest driving valuations ever higher.

Overall returns improve quarter over quarter.

While the political uncertainty remains, with the US government shutdown no doubt weighing on inverstor minds (especially as it may derail the IPO train, if protracted) the Q3 returns were more than double that of Q2 at c. 16% for the most active 50 companies as represented by the PM50 Growth benchmark, with Perplexity, Anthropic and Kraken being major contributors.

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PM Insights Indication Volumes by Size Bucket

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PM Insights is the leading market data provider for private company shares- delivering unmatched clarity, precision, and independence. Built exclusively for institutions requiring the most accurate, objective, and actionable data, research, and market insights.

_{(*) PM Insights does not use contributions with volume less than $1M in our composite calculation.}

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Private & Public Market ROI

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The PM50 Growth tracks the performance of the 50 most active private names observed in the secondary market. It is an equal-weighted index, rebalanced on a monthly basis. This rebalancing of constituents over time gives way for more active names to participate in what we observe as "market performance," and in a more appropriate manner than static selections and weightings criteria.

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PM50 Growth Quarterly ROI

Private market ROI is on the rise.

The PM50 Growth Index, which tracks 50 of the most actively traded private companies, surged to a 16.2% ROI in Q3 2025, rebounding sharply from 6.7% in Q2.

During Q3 2025, eighteen private companies actively tracked by PM Insights completed IPOs, reflecting an increase from sixteen IPOs in Q2 2025. This progression highlights continued strengthening in private market liquidity and growing investor confidence, underpinning sustained momentum for private companies accessing public capital markets.

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Q3 2025 Sector ROI

Mostly positive across PM Insights active indices in Q2 2025.

Significant number of sector indicies were in the green in Q3 2025. Unsurprisingly, AI, Automation and Hardware (mostly around AI and Robotics, as well as Defense tech) are leading the way.

However, across the board, more positive returns were observed and the headline PM50 Growth also posted a much stronger return for Q3 vs the previous quarter.

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Quarterly Sector Volatility

Higher volatility in Q3 especially across AI names

Volatility rose again, mostly driven by surging AI names, with names like Anthropic and Perplexity pulling in very large primary hauls at substantially higher valuations.

But across the whole universe more volatility was evident with PM50 Growth index trippling in volatility in Q3. Much like with the AI names, most of the volatility drivers were positive jumps in names such as Apptronik, 1X and Anduril among others, as defence tech and robotics are converging and attracting more primary and secondary market demand.

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Average Bid & Ask Spread per Sector

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Median Revenue Multiple per Sector

Revenue multiples for the most active sector benchmarks continue on their upwards trajectory

Despite the bumpy end to Q1 the overall direction has remained very much up and to the right for revenue multiples in both Q2 and Q3 of 2025. The initial tumult from the tariffs and other policy uncertainty has receded and the positive momentum has returned to all major active sectors.

The positive IPOs were also seen as a major driver of positive sentiment and thus demand across sectors with AI still leading the way, but most seeing accelerating trends.

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^{Note: The reset spikes in the data are typically due to new revenue figures for each of the 12-month annual figures}