My non-consensus call for 2026: shorting private companies becomes obvious. 🐻

It’s that time of year again. Trees are put up, holiday lights turn on, and capital markets professionals make market predictions (selectively remembering last year’s). 👋

At Caplight, we’re sitting on $10B of proprietary VC secondary trade data and another $3T of VC funding round data, providing a unique soap box to make market calls from.

Here are my 5 predictions for VC in 2026:

1. Tools to hedge VC portfolios become a real need. As the AI bubble debate rages on, so do the questions about protecting downside on AI investments. In 2026, casual chatter turns into real money flowing into hedging/shorting products.

2. Co-investment keeps growing, and SPVs cross 60% of total volume. AI, infrastructure, and hardware funding rounds stay big. VCs can’t fund them from their main funds anymore, so they lean on SPVs to bridge the gap.

3. VC fundraising, primary rounds, and secondaries stay concentrated. Bigger rounds keep dollars flowing to a small set of winners. Non-tier-1 VCs struggle to raise blind pool funds, pushing even more investing through SPVs.

4. Ultra HNWI will chase both VC alpha and VC beta. Ultra HNWI will pay premium fees for real private stock pickers (likely earlier-stage focused, or specialised, with unique access to deal flow) and expect low fees for broad late-stage exposure. Wealth platforms will continue expanding their venture offerings to match this demand (see GS, MS, Schwab).

5. 2026 sees twice the VC-backed IPOs of 2025. Remember “liberation day”? Yeah, me neither. In 2026, markets stay numb to macro noise and a healthy IPO window opens up in January. Our IPO tracker is as full as it's ever been.

So, what did I get wrong here?


Disclaimer: This communication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investment products. Consult with your financial advisor or an investment professional before making any investment decisions.



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