Inside The Private-Market Divide: EquityZen’s Phil Haslett On AI, SaaS And Secondaries

The Private-Market Divide: A Tale of Two Vintages

The secondary market for buying and selling shares in venture-backed companies before they go public has become increasingly active and heated. EquityZen, a New York-based company, operates a marketplace for shares of privately held companies, giving employees and other shareholders a way to sell stock before a company goes public or is acquired. Morgan Stanley announced plans to acquire EquityZen in October 2025 and completed the deal in January 2026, bringing the company under the investment bank's umbrella.

Phil Haslett, co-founder and chief strategy officer of EquityZen, has had a front-row seat to the secondary market's evolution. Crunchbase News spoke with Haslett about what secondary-market pricing says about today's most sought-after startups, why AI companies are commanding premiums while many older startups trade at discounts, what the IPO market looks like beyond its biggest names, and why investors are taking a closer look at hard tech.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Crunchbase News: The second quarter was one of the strongest venture-backed IPO quarters since 2021, but SpaceX drove much of that activity. If you remove SpaceX, how open is the IPO market for the typical late-stage startup?

Phil Haslett: Generally, I'd say it's better than it was three or six months ago. If you were a private late-stage technology company, you probably were going to wait until after SpaceX anyway, so that hurdle is gone. Tech markets are also doing well. The stock market is at an all-time high, and there's been a strong recovery in tech stocks overall. I assume that we're gearing up for a busier summer than usual.

Another thing to consider is IPO performance beyond SpaceX. Some have had initial enthusiasm followed by a slowdown. Cerebras has come down a bit. So companies may see it as a good time to go public, while post-IPO performance has been, in a word, 'meh.' But within AI, I think we've seen that there's opportunity up and down the production curve — from energy for data centers, to the technology inside them, to orchestration of compute, to efficient spending on training and inference. There are a lot of interesting companies along that spectrum, and I think that bodes well for companies in the space that want to go public.

A few companies entered your Top 20, including Figure AI, Project Prometheus, Redwood Materials, and Scale AI. Does that reflect a durable shift away from traditional software, or are investors chasing a small group of scarce, high-profile hard-tech companies?

Haslett: I think it reflects a thematic shift. The companies entering that list generally fall into AI infrastructure, space tech, and robotics. If those are industries we think will have generational growth opportunities, the logical conclusion is that each sector will have winners. SpaceX gets people thinking about opportunities in space and space tech, and by extension defense tech. The same applies to AI infrastructure. If the market is that big, and we've seen companies go public over the last year or so, it stands to reason investors will be interested in other companies in that space.

I think that's more important than simply chasing scarce supply. These businesses tend to be more capital intensive and may take longer to reach predictable revenue than a traditional SaaS company. How are secondary investors underwriting them?

Haslett: If a company needs more capital, investors have to decide whether the overall opportunity is big enough to justify waiting longer and having the company raise more. If you have to build a factory or get regulatory approval, that can delay the company's ability to increase its valuation or reach an exit. Investors discount that into what they're willing to pay. Secondary investors are making the same calculus as primary venture and growth investors, so you'd imagine much of that is already baked into headline valuations from primary raises.

What's changed is that capital-intensive companies now have more financing options. Five or six years ago, a battery company or new chip manufacturer might have had little choice but to raise equity. In 2026, more credit and asset-based financing options are available. That matters because if one of these companies underperforms or has a distressed asset sale, creditors and lenders get paid first. Secondary investors have to factor that in, too.

EquityZen says the average transaction occurred at a 38% discount to the last funding round, while many AI transactions traded at premiums. What does that say about how bifurcated the private market has become?

Haslett: I don't know if it's a mispricing. There are essentially two vintages of private companies right now. Some companies weren't built AI-first and have had to adapt. Many raised during the go-go years of 2021, at very high valuations, and may not have raised since. They've had to rethink their strategies, which can slow growth and execution. That gets reflected in the discount. Then there's a new wave of companies, from 2023 and beyond, that were built with an AI-first mentality. They started from a clean slate, may operate more efficiently, and have a cleaner story for the market. Some of those companies are raising rounds in quick succession at higher valuations. Secondary investors may pay a premium because they believe the company's trajectory is clear.