Caplight Raises $16M Series A as Private Market Data Becomes Institutional Infrastructure

Private markets have a transparency problem. Unlike public markets, where prices update continuously, venture-backed companies often rely on fragmented secondary transactions, private negotiations, and information scattered across investors and brokers. That makes reliable price discovery difficult, even for sophisticated institutions managing billions of dollars.

That is why Caplight, a San Francisco-based fintech company building data and transaction infrastructure for venture capital and private markets, just announced a $16M Series A led by BlackRock, Fin Capital, and LEAP Global Partners, with strategic participation from UBS Investment Bank. The round will help Co-Founder and CEO Javier Avalos, Co-Founder and CTO Justin Moore, and their team expand AI-powered private market data, deepen agentic research workflows, strengthen APIs, and pursue broader collaboration opportunities across BlackRock's private markets ecosystem, including Aladdin and Preqin. Read the official Series A announcement.

The funding represents more than another venture announcement. It reflects growing institutional demand for infrastructure that helps investors understand private markets with greater confidence. As companies stay private longer and venture capital continues maturing into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class, better data has become less of a competitive advantage and more of a prerequisite.

What Happened

Caplight announced a $16M Series A financing led by BlackRock, Fin Capital, and LEAP Global Partners, alongside strategic participation from UBS Investment Bank. Existing investors including DB1 Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, and Dash Fund also participated, bringing Caplight's total disclosed funding to $26M.

Caplight was founded by Javier Avalos and Justin Moore, two former executives at Forge Global, who experienced firsthand how difficult it was for institutional investors to access reliable pricing and liquidity information for venture-backed companies. Rather than building another marketplace, Caplight has steadily evolved into a data and transaction infrastructure platform serving venture capital firms, hedge funds, investment banks, private equity firms, and institutional asset managers.

That evolution mirrors a broader shift across financial markets. Institutions increasingly recognize that superior data often creates a greater competitive advantage than simply deploying more capital.

Why This Matters

Private markets have expanded dramatically over the past decade, yet the infrastructure supporting them has not evolved at the same pace.

Unlike public exchanges, where continuous trading creates transparent pricing, private company transactions happen infrequently and often behind closed doors. Investors frequently assemble valuation models using fragmented information from brokers, funding rounds, and secondary transactions.

Caplight aims to consolidate those signals into a unified intelligence layer.

According to the company, its platform includes 100,000+ company and investor profiles, $4T in funding round data, more than $300B in proprietary secondary market transaction data, and over $5B in daily live transaction flow. Customers collectively managing more than $52T in assets access the platform through web applications, APIs, and MCP integrations. Those figures illustrate why infrastructure businesses often become more valuable as participation grows. Every new transaction improves the quality of the network itself.

Market Context

The venture ecosystem is entering a different phase.

Companies remain private longer. Institutional investors continue increasing allocations to venture-backed businesses. Secondary markets are becoming increasingly important for liquidity. Yet transparent pricing remains limited.

That mismatch creates opportunity.

Caplight's patented MarketPrice™ platform combines funding rounds, order flow, and secondary transaction data to generate institutional pricing estimates for venture-backed companies. Rather than relying solely on historical transactions, the platform continuously refines pricing intelligence as additional market signals become available. Patent information is available through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

BlackRock's participation deserves particular attention. The world's largest asset manager is not simply investing in another fintech startup. It is backing infrastructure designed to improve information quality across private markets. That distinction signals where institutional priorities are moving.

Competitive Landscape

Caplight operates within an increasingly important segment of financial technology alongside platforms such as Forge Global and Nasdaq Private Market.

The difference is that Caplight has increasingly positioned itself as a data infrastructure company rather than simply a transaction venue. Its pricing intelligence already supports products such as the NYSE OPEN Venture Capital Unicorn Index and the Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 30 Index, embedding its data inside institutional research workflows instead of limiting it to individual transactions.

Infrastructure businesses often become difficult to replace because customers integrate them deeply into pricing models, compliance processes, investment research, and portfolio management.

What This Signals

This financing says as much about institutional priorities as it does about Caplight.

BlackRock, Fin Capital, and LEAP Global Partners are investing in infrastructure that reduces uncertainty across private markets. UBS Investment Bank's strategic participation reinforces that established financial institutions increasingly view private market intelligence as foundational infrastructure instead of a niche capability.

For founders, investors, and operators, the lesson extends beyond this funding round.

Markets reward companies that remove friction, improve decision-making, and create trust through better information. Caplight is not trying to predict tomorrow's winners. It is building infrastructure intended to help sophisticated investors make better decisions before those outcomes become obvious.

The Bigger Industry Shift

Artificial intelligence is accelerating research. Institutional capital continues flowing into private markets. Companies are staying private longer. None of those trends reduce the need for trusted data. They amplify it.

Caplight's latest funding reflects a broader transition taking place across financial technology. The next generation of market leaders may not simply control capital. They may control the intelligence layer that helps everyone else allocate it more effectively.

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