Private Markets Face a $1.2 Billion Valuation Reckoning as Airtable, Miro Expose Stale Startup Prices
The acquisitions of Airtable and Miro at discounts of 88% and 92% to their last funding valuations point to a growing private-market backlog of 2021-era companies seeking liquidity,
The latest examples are Airtable and Miro, which were acquired by Bending Spoons for a combined $2.64 billion in cash, Forge Global reported in its September Private Markets update. The deals imply a steep reset from the companies’ last private funding rounds, exposing the gap between headline valuations and what buyers are willing to pay today.
Airtable was valued at $11 billion in a December 2021 funding round before Bending Spoons agreed to acquire it for $1.28 billion. That represents an 88% discount to its last financing valuation.
Miro saw an even sharper decline. The online collaboration software company was valued at $17.5 billion in January 2022, shortly before the market environment changed dramatically. Its $1.36 billion acquisition represents a 92% discount to that prior valuation.
Those transactions are not isolated examples. Forge said the 10 private companies with the highest previous funding-round valuations between 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 that have not raised additional capital since are trading at an average 73% discount to those prior marks.
The figures highlight a broader problem for private-market investors: companies can carry valuations from old financing rounds long after market conditions have changed.
The Secondary Market Is Putting Prices to the Test
The shift is increasingly visible in private-company trading, where investors can transact at prices that may provide a more current indication of value.
In August, the median secondary-market trade on Forge was completed at a 3% discount to the company’s last primary funding round, improving from a 7% discount in July. But the distribution remained wide, with the 10th percentile trading at an 87% discount. Forge said several companies in that group had not raised capital since 2021, leaving stale primary valuations in place.
At the same time, sellers are becoming more active. Buy-side indications of interest accounted for 45% of new and updated IOIs on Forge in August, down from 48% in July and 57% in June. It was the second consecutive month in which buyers represented less than half of marketplace activity.
That dynamic could create more pressure for companies and investors sitting on outdated marks.
Forge said there are companies that may be unlikely to return to their previous valuations through another venture round or an IPO. For those businesses, acquisitions by strategic buyers or private equity firms could provide an alternative path to liquidity.
Bending Spoons’ deals for Airtable and Miro could therefore offer a template for the broader private market: rather than waiting indefinitely for companies to recover their pandemic-era valuations, buyers and sellers may increasingly use acquisitions and secondary transactions to establish new prices.
For investors, that could mean a difficult transition as paper valuations give way to transaction prices — but also a mechanism for clearing a backlog of aging private-company assets and putting capital back to work.
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