Competition for Private Market Data

The real battle is shifting from matching trades to owning the market data that tells buyers, sellers, and brokers what a block is actually worth. Zanbato built ZX around institutional broker flow and pooled order data, which helped it show pricing and demand curves for restricted stock. Now rivals are building lighter, faster systems, plus analytics, order books, and issuer workflow tools that can turn basic brokerage into higher margin software and data revenue.

• Zanbato’s edge started with broker network density. Between 2017 and 2020 it processed more than $29B of orders across 500 plus issuers, with average trade size of $14M, which gave it one of the richest pools of private market transaction signals to feed price guidance and execution.
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• New entrants are attacking that edge with software that captures workflow before the trade. Augment is building shared order books, direct negotiation, API connectivity, and tools for brokers, issuers, and CFOs. Caplight is layering auctions, research, and derivatives on top of spot pricing, treating data as infrastructure, not just a byproduct.
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• The market still has not solved true price discovery. What exists today is mostly liquidity discovery, finding who might buy or sell. That is why valuation APIs, cap table integrations, and institutional analytics matter, they reduce uncertainty before execution and create products customers will pay for even when trading volume slows.
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The next phase of private secondary markets will look more like market data and execution software bundled together. Platforms that become the daily system of record for brokers, issuers, and investors will be able to price trades faster, close them with less manual work, and expand from transaction fees into recurring software and data revenue.