A startup can be worth tens of billions on paper and still leave its employees unable to sell a single share. The Liquidity Heat Index scores how realistic it is — right now — to turn vested private-company equity into cash before an IPO, on a transparent scale from 10 (an open, repeatable path) to 1 (frozen).
The Heat Score answers one question an employee rarely sees addressed: if I wanted to sell part of my vested stake today, how realistic is it? It is built from five public signals — weighted toward the ones employees can actually rely on.
1. Company-run liquidity (highest weight). Does the company run its own tender offers or sponsored secondary sales, and how regularly? A repeatable, company-run programme is the single strongest signal.
2. Secondary-market demand. Is there an active market of institutional buyers for the shares?
3. Transferability. Does the company permit share transfers, or do right-of-first-refusal and board-consent rules make a sale impractical?
4. Investor appetite. Is demand deep and consistent, or thin and opportunistic?
5. Scale & stage. Late-stage, institutionally-held companies clear far more easily than early-stage ones.
Every company in the Index earns its place on public evidence — a reported tender offer, a company-run secondary, or active, documented secondary-market trading. We score what can be sourced, not what can be guessed. The corollary matters: a company’s absence from the table is not a low score. Most private companies have no public liquidity signal to score at all, and we deliberately do not name companies in the cold or frozen bands — labelling a specific company “unsellable” would mean proving a negative and risks being unfair. This edition therefore maps the companies with the clearest public signals; it is reviewed quarterly and expands as new programmes are announced.
A high valuation is not a high Heat Score. The two measure different things: one is what investors will pay for the whole company; the other is whether you can sell your slice. Most private companies — the long tail the headlines never cover — sit at 2–4: no tender programme, restrictive transfer rules and thin buyer demand. The names below are the exception, not the rule.
The companies where employee liquidity is most real today. All run, or have recently run, structured routes for employees to sell before an IPO. Every company below is still privately held — these are pre-IPO liquidity routes, not public-market sales. When a company lists it leaves the Index — as SpaceX (June 2026) and Bending Spoons (July 2026) did; both appear under Graduates below.
| # | Score | Company | What the score reflects |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | OpenAIUS · AI | Repeated large employee share sales — roughly $7bn at an $852bn valuation (2026) — with deep investor demand.Dealroom, 2026 |
| 2 | 9 | StripeUS/Ireland · fintech | Regular employee tender offers; a February 2025 tender set the valuation near $91.5bn.Stripe, Feb 2025 |
| 3 | 9 | RevolutUK · fintech | Repeated secondaries to “provide employee liquidity” — employees sold shares with no new capital raised — at a $75bn valuation (2025) and again at roughly $115bn (July 2026): Europe’s clearest case of company-controlled liquidity.Revolut, 2025 |
| 4 | 9 | CanvaAustralia · design | Company-arranged secondaries let employees and ex-staff sell, including a ~$1.6bn secondary on the road to IPO (2024–25).Bloomberg Law, 2025 |
| 5 | 8 | PlaidUS · fintech | Completed a tender offer (~$8bn) that let employees cash out, and a later $575m secondary — while saying it will not go public yet.Crunchbase, 2025 |
| 6 | 8 | AnthropicUS · AI | Opened a $5–6bn share sale for current and former employees at a $350bn valuation (2025).Outlook Business, 2025 |
| 7 | 8 | DatabricksUS · data/AI | Employee share sales run alongside its mega-rounds ($60bn+ valuation); an IPO is anticipated but not yet filed.The Information, 2025 |
| 8 | 8 | MonzoUK · fintech | An October 2024 employee share sale at $5.9bn let staff cash out — though lock-ups (“golden handcuffs”) still apply.Bloomberg, 2024 |
| 9 | 8 | VintedLithuania · marketplace | Repeated secondary share sales — an EQT-led secondary reached an €8bn valuation (2024–25); the company has ruled out an IPO for now.Private Equity Wire, 2025 |
| 10 | 7 | RipplingUS · HR tech | Ran a large employee tender (reported up to ~$590m, 2024) alongside a separate $200m Series F — though former employees who had joined competitors were barred from selling, a reminder that transfer terms decide real liquidity.TechCrunch, 2024 |
| 11 | 5 | Mistral AIFrance · AI | Shares trade on secondary markets with rising demand, but there is no established, repeatable company-run tender — so access is opportunistic.Secondary pricing, 2025 |
| 12 | 5 | BoltEstonia · mobility | A secondary sale by an early investor to private buyers has traded, but there is no established employee tender — so employee access remains limited.Oaklins, 2024 |
Below this group, the Index turns cold quickly. The large majority of venture-backed companies — especially earlier-stage and Central & Eastern European names — run no tender programme at all, which places them in the 2–4 range regardless of how fast they are growing.
When a company lists, it leaves the private Index: a public listing is the ultimate liquidity event, and the final private-market Heat Score stands as a record of the moment before it listed. This is the Q4 2026 edition; the next is due Q1 2027.
| Status | Company | How it graduated |
|---|---|---|
| NOW PUBLIC | SpaceXUS · aerospace | IPO’d on Nasdaq (ticker SPCX) on 12 June 2026 at $135/share — the largest listing on record, at a ~$1.77tn+ valuation. While private it ran roughly semi-annual employee tenders: a Heat Score of 10 right up to the moment it graduated.Wikipedia, 2026 |
| NOW PUBLIC | Bending SpoonsItaly · consumer software | Listed on Nasdaq in July 2026 at roughly an $18bn valuation; its shares now trade publicly, so it leaves the private Index.Forbes, Jul 2026 |
Spotted a company that has listed, or started or stopped a programme? The Index is re-checked every quarter — corrections are welcome.
Liquidity is concentrated at the very top. A small cluster of mega-cap private companies now runs structured, repeatable employee tenders (OpenAI, Stripe, Anthropic). They are visible precisely because they are unusual — for everyone else, selling before an IPO remains the exception.
"Company-controlled liquidity" has become the model. The most liquid names don't rely on open secondary markets; they run their own tenders. That means an employee's ability to sell depends on the company's policy, not the employee's wish — and some, like Rippling, have even barred former employees who join competitors from selling.
Europe’s proof points are real but rare. Revolut, Monzo and — notably — Lithuania’s Vinted show the model works here, and that a CEE company can reach the scale to run secondaries. But they are the exceptions: fragmented option and tax regimes, and far fewer late-stage names, leave the typical European — and most of CEE — on a much harder path than a US peer.
Valuation and liquidity are not the same number. A headline valuation says what the company is worth; the Heat Score says whether you can realise your slice of it. Confusing the two is the most common and costly mistake employees make.
A high Index score means a company route may exist — it doesn't tell you what your shares are worth, what they'd cost to exercise, or what you'd net after tax. Run your own numbers, free, in your browser.
See what yours is really worth →The Heat Score is a transparent, editorial assessment built from publicly reported liquidity events, company statements and secondary-market activity, dated to October 2026. It scores liquidity infrastructure — the realistic path to a sale — and is explicitly not a view on any company's quality, prospects or valuation, nor investment, legal or tax advice. This is a point-in-time snapshot, not a live feed: scores reflect public information as of the edition date, and a programme announced tomorrow can move a score in the next quarterly edition. Each edition is a dated record — accurate as of its date — rather than a claim about every tomorrow. Companies are included where public evidence is clear enough to score responsibly; absence from the table is not a negative score. PrivateTechShares is an independent education and research resource, not a broker, marketplace or intermediary.
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