VC Liquidity Crisis and Secondary Market Boom
Key Questions
What is driving the VC liquidity crisis in Europe?
Secondary market discounts of 40-60% persist amid weak exit environments, with IPOs shifting toward partial exits and M&A. PitchBook data shows AI megadeals supporting VC resilience in the UK while overall exits remain muted, particularly in France Q2.
Which funds are active in the secondary market?
Acurio has closed a €115M VC secondaries fund, Aspire11 has deployed €100M into companies like Revolut, ElevenLabs, and Vinted, and Flexstone has acquired a $3.5B secondaries manager. SFC Capital also completed a partial exit from Hunter & Gather via secondary sale.
What is Revolut's valuation in the planned secondary share sale?
Revolut is poised for a major liquidity event targeting a $115B valuation through secondary share sales, reflecting ongoing demand for high-profile tech assets despite broader market discounts.
Private-tech liquidity is shifting toward secondaries, founder sales, employee programmes, continuation funds, take-privates and M&A, with roughly $121B of H1 secondary volume and 40–60% discounts reported. Separate coverage cites $226B in record secondary volume and a UK £2.3B Inflexion continuation fund, but periods and measures are not clearly comparable; recent reading adds no new European-specific evidence.