New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is reviving its involvement in the secondaries market.
New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, successfully raised more than $468 million for its NEA Secondary Alternative Fund. The fundraiser concluded on July 3, according to an insider familiar with the situation, yet it has garnered little attention. The fund secured capital exceeding $60 million from over 60 restricted partners, including a significant commitment of $20 million from the San Francisco Workers’ Retirement System.
Despite efforts to elicit a response from NEA regarding their comment, none was forthcoming.
Building on its existing experience, NEA has ventured into the secondaries market once more, this time focusing on acquiring current stakes in companies or other funds. Prior to becoming a registered funding advisor, the agency had previously participated in the secondary market as a non-registered entity, limiting its ownership stake to no more than 20% of its assets. That spinout evolved into NewView Capital, still led by Ravi Viswanathan, who spent nearly 15 years as an NEA investor before founding NewView.
The New Enterprise Association (NEA) reportedly secured registration as a funding advisor in 2023, according to a source familiar with the situation, positioning it to potentially relaunch its presence in the secondaries market through an in-house fund.
With liquidity at historically low levels and investors increasingly risk-averse, now is an attractive moment for those with capital to deploy funds in the secondary markets. According to Caplight’s secondary knowledge monitoring platform, a staggering amount exceeding $706 million has been invested in direct secondaries transactions, which involve acquiring an organizational stake, during the first half of 2024. Can this year’s trading volume exceed last year’s record of $1.1 billion?
Some of these buyouts occur through traditional methods, where investors purchase shares from homeowners with the approval of the company. Traders are increasingly elevating, or raising, stakes in select assets to gain access to secondary offerings from hot companies. While rare, some traders may occasionally seize a sizeable portion of the market’s movement.
The National Endowment for the Arts is not the sole agency responsible for promoting a fund dedicated to purchasing secondary shares at present? Only recently, StepStone secured a substantial $3.3 billion investment. G Squared has secured $1.1 billion for its latest late-stage fund, with a strategy to deploy these funds in secondary transactions. What entrepreneurial opportunities unfolded in the final quarter of the year for our business ventures?
