Building the Infrastructure for the Next Era of Private Markets

Our Investment in Caplight

We are excited to announce our investment in Caplight Technologies’ $16 million Series A financing.

We first partnered with co-founders Javier Avalos and Justin Moore in 2021 through our Rising Tide Network Fund. At the time, they shared a bold vision: to build the “Bloomberg of private markets.” This financing is a testament to how effectively the team has executed against that vision.

Today, however, we believe Caplight has the potential to become much more than a data provider. As venture capital continues to mature as an asset class and emerging technologies such as AI and tokenization reshape financial markets, Caplight is building critical infrastructure for the future of private investing.

We are proud to co-lead this round alongside BlackRock and Fin Capital, with strategic participation from UBS Investment Bank. Existing investors, including DB1 Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Deutsche Börse Group), Better Tomorrow Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, and Dash Fund, also increased their positions. We are equally pleased to partner with iCapital co-founder Nick Veronis.

The Problem: Venture Has Outgrown Its Infrastructure

Private markets have expanded dramatically over the past decade, growing into a $12+ trillion asset class. Yet despite this growth, much of the infrastructure supporting private market investing remains fragmented and outdated. Transaction data is opaque. Pricing is inconsistent. Workflows remain highly manual. Information asymmetry is often the rule rather than the exception.

Institutional investors collectively hold hundreds of billions of dollars in private company exposure, yet there is no centralized exchange and limited ability to reliably price, hedge, or transact around these assets in real time. As private markets continue to scale, investors increasingly need a trusted source of truth.

This is where Caplight comes in.

The company has built one of the most comprehensive institutional datasets and networks focused on private companies, including:

• $300+ billion of proprietary secondary market data
• $4 trillion of funding round data
• 100,000+ company and investor profiles
• $5+ billion of daily transaction flow

Sit in the Data Flows…

Caplight sits squarely within the data flows of private markets. Its proprietary dataset is becoming a foundational layer of private market infrastructure, relied upon by leading asset managers, venture firms, and investment banks collectively overseeing more than $52 trillion in assets.

Here is what makes Caplight’s proprietary dataset particularly compelling: you cannot safely price, trade, write derivatives, or tokenize a private security without reliable, continuously updated data on its value.

In our view, venture has entered an era where leading companies shaping the future of technology and intelligence will remain private for longer, while raising larger rounds. As a result, secondary transactions, tender offers, liquidity programs, and pre-IPO distributions will need to become significantly more efficient. The demand for trusted private market infrastructure is only beginning.

…Capture the Money Flows

While Caplight’s position within the data flows is compelling on its own, we believe an equally attractive opportunity lies in the money flows. The company is leveraging its data foundation to expand into research and transaction workflows across private markets, including primary fundraising, co-investments, tender offers, and, over time, lending and hedging solutions.

This financing will accelerate Caplight’s ability to build the tools and infrastructure required to support these increasingly complex private market transactions.

Why Are We Doubling Down Now

We believe private markets are moving toward a future that is more transparent, more liquid, and more accessible.

As private assets increasingly become digitized, tokenized, and settled on modern financial infrastructure, market participants will require trusted, real-time pricing and transaction data. The need for a system of record for private markets will only become more important.

Caplight is uniquely positioned at the center of this evolution.

We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with Javier, Justin, and the entire Caplight team, and we look forward to supporting them as they continue building the infrastructure layer for the next generation of private markets.