Nasdaq Private Market

Nasdaq Private Market was founded in 2013 as an extension of the exchange operator's public-markets infrastructure into the private company space, focused primarily on facilitating company-organized liquidity events — tender offers, structured auctions, and block trades — rather than open peer-to-peer listings.

Because it is run by the same company that operates the Nasdaq exchange, the platform is frequently the infrastructure of choice for late-stage private companies planning a future IPO on Nasdaq, giving them a liquidity solution and a natural on-ramp to public markets under one roof.

Its company-run event model contrasts with marketplaces like Forge, EquityZen, and Hiive, which more commonly support ongoing, investor-initiated listings rather than centering the process around a single company-scheduled event.

Nasdaq Private Market operates the infrastructure for company-sanctioned liquidity: structured tender offers, auctions and block trades run with the company's involvement rather than around it. In a tender offer the company sets the window, the price and who may participate, and the platform administers the process.

Employees and early investors sell; the company, existing investors or new institutional buyers purchase. This is the most orderly route to liquidity in private shares precisely because the company designs it — and the trade-off is that the terms, including price, are largely set rather than negotiated by each seller.

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.