Case studies
Twenty real secondary deals, across geographies
Every deal below is publicly reported — no hypotheticals. Together they cover the full range of why and how secondary sales happen: employee liquidity, investor-led tenders, merger-driven liquidity, discount and premium dynamics, and strategic buyouts of early backers, spanning North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
North America
Stripe
How a company that kept delaying its IPO used structured tender offers to keep employee equity liquid for years.
United States · Fintech / payments · 2021–2023
North America
SpaceX
The most-cited example of a private company treating secondary liquidity as a routine, calendarized program rather than a one-off event.
United States · Aerospace · Ongoing, ~2x per year
Asia
ByteDance
A buyback-style tender offer at one of the largest private valuations in the world, used to manage employee and investor liquidity absent a listing.
China · Consumer internet / media · 2023–2024
Europe
Klarna
What happens to existing shareholders when a headline valuation collapses 85% — and how a later secondary sale re-priced the story.
Sweden · Fintech / BNPL · 2022 & 2024
Europe
Revolut
A regulatory setback didn't stop a valuation jump — how a secondary sale let staff cash out while the company stayed private and unlisted.
United Kingdom · Fintech / neobank · 2024
Latin America
Nubank
How early investors used secondary sales to de-risk years before Nubank's 2021 IPO, LatAm's largest fintech listing to date.
Brazil · Fintech / digital banking · 2018–2021
Oceania
Canva
A profitable, cash-generative private company that never needed outside capital — but still ran tenders purely to reward and retain staff.
Australia · SaaS / design software · 2021–2024
Southeast Asia
GoTo (Gojek–Tokopedia)
How a merger between two of Indonesia's largest startups became a liquidity event for early backers on both sides.
Indonesia · Super-app / e-commerce · 2021
South Asia
Flipkart
When Walmart bought control of Flipkart, most of the money went not into the company but directly to early venture investors selling their stakes.
India · E-commerce · 2018
Europe / Middle East
Trendyol
A minority-stake secondary sale that reset a company's headline valuation upward, without the company raising a single dollar of new primary capital.
Turkey · E-commerce · 2022
North America
Databricks
How removing a single RSU technicality turned one company into a serial tender-offer issuer, twice in a year.
United States · Enterprise software / data · 2025–2026
Europe
Checkout.com
A 77% internal markdown from a $40B peak, followed by a company-funded employee share buyback that partially clawed the number back.
United Kingdom · Fintech / payments · 2022–2025
South Asia
PhonePe
Investors paid roughly $943M in tax to move the company's legal home from Singapore to India — years before employees finally got a buyback window.
India · Fintech / digital payments · 2022–2025
South Asia
Zepto
A ~$250M secondary sale that wasn't really about cashing out — it was about shifting the cap table's nationality mix.
India · Quick commerce · 2025
North America
Anduril Industries
A defense-tech company's revenue doubled in a year — and it opened a $100M tender so employees could finally spend some of the paper gains.
United States · Defense technology · 2025
North America
OpenAI
The largest employee tender in the industry to date — $6.6B sold, with individual sellers capped at $30M each.
United States · Artificial intelligence · 2025
North America
Anthropic
A tender offer that fell short — not because employees doubted the price, but because they thought the price was too low.
United States · Artificial intelligence · 2026
North America
Perplexity AI
A fast-growing, heavily hyped AI company whose shares still traded at a discount on secondary marketplaces — the exception, not the rule.
United States · Artificial intelligence · 2025–2026
North America
Discord
A brand-new $15B primary round, and secondary shares still traded nearly 40% below it — a rare, visible gap between what insiders paid and what the market believed.
United States · Social / gaming platform · 2024–2026
Asia
Xiaohongshu (RedNote)
A company that never announced a traditional funding round in this period — instead, its valuation climbed step by step through a string of secondary sales alone, from $17B to $50B.
China · Consumer internet / social commerce · 2024–2025