Augment closes $12M Series A as private market trading exceeds $60B

October 22, 2025 — Augment, the platform making private markets liquid, accessible, and transparent, today announced the close of its $12M Series A funding round led by Builders VC with participation from Neo, Golden Section, E1 Ventures, Corp Capital, and OPCO Ventures. The company has reached an eight-figure annual run rate and is profitable year-to-date.

The announcement arrives as the US VC direct secondary market hit $61.1B in Q2 2025, according to Pitchbook's, up from $50B just two quarters prior, marking a seismic shift in how investors and employees tap into liquidity in private companies.

Augment has quickly become one of the fastest-growing tech platforms in the space, managing over $400M in pre-IPO assets after launching its Collective product just last summer, according to Caplight's secondary market pricing data. The company's trajectory mirrors a broader transformation in private markets: what was once dismissed as a distress signal has evolved into vital infrastructure for the innovation economy.

"Secondaries have become a core pillar of modern company-building," said CEO and co-founder Noel Moldvai. "Top private companies rely on liquidity to retain talent, and investors now see secondaries as standard practice in mature markets. The majority of value creation happens before companies go public, yet private markets have little financial infrastructure to support them. Augment is building that missing layer to power liquidity and access for both institutions and individuals alike."

“Why do companies go public?” said Augment co-founder and COO Adam Crawley. “For capital, branding, and liquidity. The first two are already solved in the private market. Just look at SpaceX and OpenAI, which have raised tens of billions and become household names. The third component is liquidity, and that’s going to be solved in the next few  years by platforms like Augment.”

The forces reshaping private markets

Augment believes four forces are converging to accelerate demand for private market platforms:

Companies are staying private longer

‍According to the Warrington College of Business, the path to IPO has stretched dramatically, with many unicorns taking more than a decade to go public (or never). We’ve witnessed the rise of deca- and centi-corns which 10 years ago would have been public companies. We may even have the first trillion dollar private tech company in the next year or two. Meanwhile, most value creation, and opportunity, happens before IPO, leaving traditional investors watching from the sidelines during the highest growth phases.

The next trillion dollar company won't wait for Wall Street.

‍AI is spawning leaner, faster growing companies that are rewriting the playbook for value creation. These capital-efficient businesses will seek liquidity earlier and more frequently than their predecessors, creating unprecedented demand for secondary markets.

Secondary markets are exploding.

‍According to Pitchbook’s Q2 Secondaries Report, secondary SPVs have grown 545% over the past two years, with total capital raised jumping 1,000%. Yet despite this surge, secondaries still represent just 1.9% of total unicorn value, a massive whitespace opportunity.

Regulatory walls are coming down.  

‍In August 2025, the Administration issued an executive order opening the door for 401(k) retirement accounts to hold alternative investment products including private equity, potentially unlocking trillions in dormant capital for private markets.

The secondary markets function as a vital liquidity valve for the venture ecosystem, though trading remains concentrated among the highest valued, late-stage unicorns. Augment is expanding that access and bringing a new generation of investors into iconic companies before they go public.

A platform built for the modern investor

Augment's newly redesigned platform gives accredited and institutional investors access to over 300 pre-IPO companies for anywhere between $10k and $100M. Its Power 20 rankings highlight the most in-demand and active names like OpenAI, SpaceX, Anduril, Canva, Neuralink, Rippling, Groq, and Perplexity.

Augment enables accredited investors to navigate the process of investing in minutes. Transactions that once required extensive networks and six-figure minimums now are as low as $10k. The platform's user-driven marketplace also lets investors indicate interest in companies without active listings, prompting Augment to source inventory on demand.

"Augment is building the financial infrastructure for the private market," said CEO Noel Moldvai. "There’s a lot of friction in private trading today – a single transaction can take 30-60 days to close. The missing piece is financial and technical infrastructure to make trades happen faster. We’re bringing that time down to seconds. The market is long overdue for change."

“Access to late-stage, pre-IPO unicorns was once limited to VC insiders with large checks,” said Geno Zawrotny, CRO at Augment. “When I started in this space thirteen years ago, secondary trades were conducted with paper documents, wet signatures, and phone calls. Today, platforms like ours make private market access more transparent and efficient, allowing investors to invest with just a few clicks.”

Powering the future with top-tier backing

The Series A round was led by Builders VC with continued backing from Golden Section and Neo, who led Augment's seed round. The funding will accelerate product development, expand the platform's company coverage, and build out institutional capabilities.

As part of the Series A, Mike Rosengarten joins the board. Mike is a three-time founder and GP at Builders.

“We’re seeing a shift in how companies, investors, and employees view their equity,” said Mike Rosengarten of Builders. “Everyone benefits as liquidity becomes easier. Companies gain stronger alignment with their teams. Employees have more flexibility with what’s often their largest source of compensation. Leadership can focus on building their businesses without the pressure of all-or-nothing outcomes. This shift is fueled by strong demand from accredited investors and a changing venture landscape, where more firms are becoming RIAs and gaining freedom in how they approach secondaries. Augment is building the rails that make this all frictionless.”

“Noel and Adam are building Augment the way durable companies get built — by solving a real market need with discipline before turning up the volume,” said Dougal Cameron, GP at Golden Section. “The Series A is a validation that the model works: strong customers, clear ROI, and smart use of capital. We’re excited to see them scale from a position of strength.”

Soham Mazumdar, co-founder of Rubrik (NYSE: RBRK) and an active Augment user, said "Like many technologists, I want to ride the wave of this explosion in innovation by investing in hyper-growth companies. But doing so on the secondary market has felt more painful than founding a decacorn. Augment has taken a process that used to take me days to evaluate investment opportunities with management fees, carry, deal documents, wire instructions — and reduced it to minutes. I love it.”

To learn more, create an account and browse companies, visit augment.market.

About Augment

Augment is making private markets liquid, accessible, and transparent. The platform enables investors to buy and sell shares in over 300 of the world's most sought-after private companies, including SpaceX, xAI, Coreweave (now public), Apptronik, Cerebras, Databricks, Canva, and other pre-IPO leaders, with minimums as low as $10,000. Augment is building the infrastructure for a new innovation economy where anyone can own a piece of the future.

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Augment Markets, Inc. is a technology company offering software and data services with securities-related services offered through its wholly-owned but separately managed subsidiary Augment Capital, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC.

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