Forge Global

Forge Global built a marketplace and registered broker-dealer platform matching buyers and sellers of private company shares, offering both direct share purchases and pooled fund vehicles for eligible investors, with typical transaction fees in the 2.5-5% range and deal timelines of 30-90 days.

Forge went public via a SPAC merger and traded on the NYSE before Charles Schwab agreed to acquire the company; the deal, announced in late 2025 at roughly $660 million ($45 cash per share), completed on March 2, 2026.

Under Schwab, Forge's marketplace becomes part of a much larger brokerage's effort to give its client base direct access to private-company shares — one of the clearest signs yet of secondary marketplaces moving from niche fintech into mainstream retail brokerage infrastructure.

Forge is a marketplace, not a buyer. It matches holders of private company shares with prospective purchasers, handles the transfer paperwork, and provides pricing data on private companies — but it does not take the positions onto its own balance sheet in the way the funds above do. It also offers fund-based access for investors who want exposure without negotiating individual transfers.

This is where employees, former employees and early investors in venture-backed companies actually transact. The critical constraint is the company itself: shares are usually subject to transfer restrictions and rights of first refusal, so a listing is only the beginning of a process the company can still block.

Technology-driven marketplaces that match buyers and sellers of private shares and standardize the paperwork. They intermediate transactions; they are not themselves buyers of the positions they list.

This site groups buyers into four categories, because the category tells you more about how a firm behaves than its size does. See the rest of themarketplace & platformgroup in the directory.