Independent Private-Market Platforms After Industry Consolidation
Schwab bought Forge. Morgan Stanley bought EquityZen. The pre-IPO stock platforms that stayed independent may have made a better bet.
When Charles Schwab agreed to acquire Forge Global for $660 million last November, just weeks after Morgan Stanley announced its own purchase of rival platform EquityZen, those with an interest in pre-IPO stock absorbed the news with a mixture of validation and unease. Validation, because two of the largest wealth management entities in America had just confirmed what specialists in the market had been arguing for years — that private company shares are no longer a niche asset class but a structural feature of the modern investment landscape. Unease, because the acquisitions raised a question that no party addressed directly: when the infrastructure of a market is owned by institutions with their own substantial interests in its outcomes, what happens to the integrity of that market?
Private stock transaction volumes have grown at a pace that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. PitchBook pegs the US VC secondaries market size at $106.3 billion in 2025; more than double its midpoint estimate for direct secondaries 2024.That trajectory reflects more than a moment of market enthusiasm. Extended timelines for late-stage companies to go public, increasing institutional demand for liquidity, and the recognition of secondaries as a portfolio management tool — not a last resort — have combined to make the private market a key feature of how capital moves through the economy. And with the liquidity of private stocks increasing, the competition for who earns the right to facilitate these markets is just beginning.
The logic for both acquisitions is sound. Rick Wurster, president and CEO of Charles Schwab, framed the Forge deal as a way to “deepen liquidity, improve transparency, and further democratize access” to private markets across its existing client accounts.Doing so offers the possibility to open up pre-IPO stocks to new customers by onboarding retail and semi-institutional investors. Morgan Stanley, for its part, is attempting to assemble what appears to be a full-stack private markets platform, adding EquityZen to existing holdings which includes Shareworks.Both firms appear to have made the same bet: private markets are becoming important to their clients, and the institutions that own the infrastructure for sourcing and distributing private stock will have an advantage. What is less clear is whether owning these platforms correlates with an expertise in running them — or that these platforms have the technical capacity to support the investment banks’ vision.
Logic dictates that secondary markets function best when pricing reflects genuine supply and demand, when buyers and sellers have equivalent access to information, and when the provider facilitating the transaction has no stake in its outcome beyond execution quality. When the platform sits inside an institution that also manages client assets, advises on transactions, and maintains its own commercial relationships with the companies whose shares are being traded, market integrity could become more difficult to maintain.
Sim Desai, CEO of Hiive — a leading independent platform for pre-IPO stocks — puts it directly. “The secondary market for private company shares is not a single, homogeneous market — it operates across a wide range of transaction types, company policies, regulatory environments, and counterparty sophistication levels,” he says. “What we’ve built at Hiive is brokerage services and technology for that full complexity: a centralized, compliant, and controlled system capable of handling institutional-grade transactions with the depth of market knowledge that serious participants require.”
Hiive operates a model where providing access to some of the world’s most in-demand company stock is tallied with market-driven pricing data. Its design, Desai says, reflects a deliberate philosophy: that price discovery and exceptional execution services should sit at the center of every transaction. In Q4 of 2025 alone, Hiive facilitated more than $1 billion in closed transaction volume of private stock. Institutional-grade transactions drove the majority of volume in 2025, and the rate of fund formation on Hiive increased by 213% over the course of the year, with fund investments reaching an all-time high of $317 million in the fourth quarter alone.
The acquisition of Hiive’s two largest competitors may cause the landscape to bifurcate. Independent platforms, including Nasdaq Private Market and Hiive, now occupy a distinct position in that emerging divide. The investment bank-owned platforms will battle on distribution. As of late 2024, over $5 billion had been raised in the private secondary market through registered ’40 Act funds in a single year, representing a wave of retail and semi-institutional capital that needs platforms with the reach to absorb it. The perhaps more contested territory lies at the institutional end: fund managers, secondary specialists, registered investment advisors, and sophisticated counterparties transacting at scale across complex deal structures and multiple jurisdictions. This segment has different requirements — execution precision, market depth, and a minimization of the conflicts of interest that arise when the marketplace operator and the asset manager share a parent company. It is the segment where trust is earned through the quality of every deal, rather than the size of the corporate owner behind it.
The distribution advantages held by the major investment banks are real. The institutional credibility that comes with a Morgan Stanley or Schwab name takes years to build through track record, and the balance sheet depth that allows large financial institutions to invest ahead of revenue is a structural advantage that is hard to replicate. But Desai believes Hiive has the capacity to catch up. “With a market which is still growing rapidly, the opportunity for a specialist technology-enabled platform that isn’t constrained by the priorities of a wealth management parent is significant,” he says. “When Forge and EquityZen were independent, they could try and occupy a similar position. Now that they’re not, that space is open.”
That conviction carries more strategic logic than might initially appear. The private markets are still early in their institutionalization — new capital structures, new deal types, and new regulatory environments are emerging at pace — and the platforms that serve that evolution most effectively may be those that can move quickly, build purpose-specific solutions, and make decisions unconstrained by the priorities of a legacy parent. An independent platform can serve institutional buyers, fund managers, late-stage investors, and corporate treasury functions with a single, undivided focus.
“Hiive is not a feature inside a bank,” Desai says. “We are building a purpose-built platform for institutions, investors, and sellers in the private markets. Independence is what allows us to do that with the focus and integrity the market deserves.”
The consolidation of Forge and EquityZen into large financial institutions has clarified the terms of the private market debate. As the segment grows, it’s possible that more capital, larger allocators, and greater conflicts of interest could follow. The platforms that navigate that transition well will be the ones that answer the hardest version of the question their users are asking: both whether they can access a transaction, and if they can trust the price they are getting. The major financial institutions have made their answer plain. Hiive is offering a different one — and which model could serve as a standard for the next phase of the market remains to be seen.
Hiive Markets Limited (“Hiive”) or its affiliates may have assisted in preparing this content. All views and publication decisions are the sole responsibility of the publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of Hiive. Private securities are speculative, illiquid, and involve risk of loss. Not all private companies will experience a successful IPO or other liquidity event. Hiive is not affiliated with, associated with, or endorsed by any of the companies mentioned herein. All services or trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Hiive is not affiliated with International Business Times; no compensation was provided. Hiive Markets Limited, member FINRA/SIPC.
