PRE-IPO WEEKLY – PRIVATE MARKET TOP 15

Overview

G.L.A. INVEST RESEARCH’s “PRIVATE MARKET TOP 15” newsletter highlights the pre-IPO companies that we feel represent the best long-duration, exponential-growth opportunities across defense technology, artificial intelligence, fintech, energy, robotics, and space infrastructure. Each name below has been vetted for founder pedigree, capital-markets backing, defensibility, and a credible path to a liquidity event.

#1.Anduril Industries

Anduril builds autonomous weapons systems, drones, counter-UAS, and the Lattice software-defined battle network that is displacing legacy defense primes. Founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey (Oculus VR), Trae Stephens, Brian Schimpf, Matt Grimm, and Joe Chen, the company is chaired by Stephens, a Founders Fund partner. Backers include Founders Fund (its largest-ever single check at $1 billion), Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Sands Capital, General Catalyst, ICONIQ, Fidelity, and Baillie Gifford. Its moat is a vertically integrated software-hardware stack built for rapid manufacturing rather than the decade-long procurement cycles of Lockheed or Northrop, giving it pricing and speed advantages in a global rearmament TAM measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. Valuation has rocketed from $30.5 billion (June 2025) to $61 billion (May 2026) and is reportedly in talks for a fresh round near $100 billion, positioning it alongside Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin in scale. Catalysts include booming military sales tied to the Iran conflict and NATO rearmament, with risk centered on program cancellation, export controls, and single-customer (DoD) concentration; the most likely exit is a mega-IPO within 12-24 months.

Transforming U.S. Defense Capabilities with Advanced Technology | Anduril

Anduril Industries builds advanced autonomous systems and defense technology to protect US and allied forces. Creating the future of national security through AI, robotics, and cutting-edge engineering.

Anduril

#2.Anthropic

Anthropic is the maker of the Claude family of large language models and safety-focused foundation-model research, founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei alongside a team of former OpenAI researchers including Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Tom Brown. Its capital base is arguably the deepest in private markets: a $65 billion Series H closed in May 2026 led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia, with Coatue and ICONIQ co-leading and Amazon, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, GIC, and Temasek among the roster, pushing the post-money valuation to $965 billion. The moat is Constitutional AI safety research plus enterprise trust, reinforced by a 10-year, $100+ billion AWS compute commitment tied to Amazon’s up-to-$25 billion investment. Valuation growth has been extraordinary — from roughly $380 billion in February 2026 to near $965 billion three months later — as Claude’s enterprise and coding-agent adoption accelerates and it overtakes OpenAI’s reported $852 billion mark. Key risks include compute-cost intensity, model commoditization, and regulatory scrutiny of frontier AI; the exit path is a landmark IPO once the AI capex cycle matures.

Databricks

Databricks provides the unified “Data and AI” lakehouse platform spanning data engineering, machine learning, and now agentic AI tooling (Unity AI Gateway, Genie, Lakebase). Co-founded in 2013 by Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, and the original Apache Spark research team at UC Berkeley, the company has scaled into one of the most valuable private software firms ever. Its cap table includes Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Coatue, BlackRock, Blackstone, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, and sovereign funds like GIC, QIA, and Temasek. The moat is deep enterprise data-gravity lock-in plus a neutral, multi-cloud architecture that competes directly with Snowflake and hyperscaler-native tools. Valuation surged from $134 billion in February 2026 to $188 billion by July 2026 in a Coatue-led strategic round, nearly tripling in 18 months even as CEO Ali Ghodsi has publicly called 2026 “a bad year to go public,” delaying IPO plans. With $5.4 billion in ARR growing roughly 65% year over year, the TAM spans the entire enterprise data-and-AI infrastructure stack. Primary risk is intensifying competition from hyperscaler-native AI platforms; the exit path remains a future mega-IPO once market conditions stabilize.(IPO in 2027 is ver likely)

Stripe

Stripe operates the dominant API-first payments and financial infrastructure platform underpinning e-commerce globally, founded in 2010 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison. Backers span its entire history from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Sequoia in the 2011 seed round through Thrive Capital, Coatue, and a16z in its 2026 tender offer, alongside General Catalyst, Founders Fund, GIC, and Goldman Sachs. The moat is its developer-first API layer and expanding “financial infrastructure” suite (Billing, Treasury, Capital), which processed $1.9 trillion in payment volume in 2025 — roughly 1.6% of global GDP — commanding a 22.3% share of payment-processing software. Valuation climbed from $50 billion in 2023 to $159 billion via a February 2026 tender offer, its highest mark ever, surpassing the 2021 peak of $95 billion[c2]. Catalysts include the new revenue suite scaling toward a $1 billion run rate; risks include margin compression from card-network fee pressure and competition from Adyen and PayPal. Given repeated tender offers rather than primary IPO filings, near-term liquidity is likely to continue via secondary sales, with an eventual IPO the ultimate exit.(IPO in 2027 is likely)

Neuralink

Neuralink develops brain-computer interface (BCI) implants enabling direct neural control of digital devices, founded by Elon Musk in 2016. Investors include Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, ARK Invest, Thrive Capital, Vy Capital, DFJ Growth, Lightspeed, and G42. Its moat is a multi-year lead in high-bandwidth implantable electrode arrays and surgical robotics validated through ongoing human clinical trials, addressing a TAM spanning paralysis treatment, sensory restoration, and eventually consumer neurotech. The last primary round (Series E, May 2026) valued the company at $9.65 billion, but secondary market chatter has reportedly pushed implied valuations toward $40 billion in early 2026 — roughly 4x the last formal round — reflecting outsized retail and institutional appetite for Musk-affiliated deep tech. Catalysts include expanded clinical trial results and FDA milestones; risks include surgical/regulatory setbacks, slow patient enrollment, and reliance on Musk’s continued involvement and capital. Exit is likely a distant IPO once commercialization scales beyond trial cohorts.

Saronic

Saronic builds autonomous surface vessels (USVs) for naval and maritime defense, founded in 2022 by Vibhav Altekar, Dino Mavrookas, Doug Lambert, and Robert Lehman. Key backers include Elad Gil (Series C lead), General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer, and Franklin Templeton. The moat is Port Alpha, a purpose-built autonomous shipyard designed to manufacture unmanned vessels at a speed and cost legacy shipbuilders cannot match, addressing a TAM tied to U.S. Navy fleet modernization and allied maritime security. Valuation has compounded extraordinarily fast — from $1 billion (July 2024) to $4 billion (February 2025) to $9.25 billion in a $1.75 billion Series D closed in March 2026 led by Kleiner Perkins. Catalysts include expanding Navy and allied contracts amid rising Indo-Pacific tensions; the key risk is execution on shipyard scale-up and reliance on continued defense budget growth. A defense-tech IPO wave, following Anduril and Shield AI, is the probable exit route. (IMHO Saronic merging with Anduril would make a lot of sense)

Crusoe

Crusoe operates vertically integrated, energy-first AI infrastructure — building modular data centers co-located with stranded or flared energy sources to power GPU clusters. Founded in Denver in 2018 by Chase Lochmiller (ex-Polychain Capital) and Cully Cavness, the company pivoted from crypto-mining infrastructure to AI compute. Backers include Founders Fund, NVIDIA, Fidelity, Mubadala Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Ribbit Capital, and Long Journey Ventures. The moat is speed-to-power: Crusoe can site and energize data centers faster than traditional utility-dependent developers, a critical edge given the AI-compute power bottleneck. Valuation rose from $2.8 billion (December 2024) to over $10 billion in its October 2025 Series E, with projected revenue climbing from roughly $2 billion in 2026 to $5.5 billion by 2028 — a roughly 105% CAGR. Catalysts include continued hyperscaler GPU demand; risks include capital intensity, energy-price volatility, and customer concentration in AI labs. A future IPO or strategic sale to an energy or hyperscale infrastructure player is the likely exit.

Erebor

Erebor is a newly chartered U.S. digital bank targeting defense-tech, crypto, and dual-use enterprise clients, founded in 2025 by Anduril’s Palmer Luckey and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. It secured a national bank charter from the OCC and is backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Lux Capital, 8VC, Haun Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz. Its moat is founder network effects — direct access to the Anduril/Palantir/defense-tech ecosystem as a captive deposit and lending base underserved by traditional banks wary of crypto and defense clients. Valuation nearly doubled from $4.35 billion (December 2025) to a targeted $8 billion (mid-2026) as deposits reportedly quadrupled in three months. Catalysts include continued defense-tech unicorn formation driving deposit growth; risks include regulatory scrutiny of a crypto-adjacent bank and interest-rate sensitivity. Exit is most plausible via IPO once the bank scales its balance sheet and loan book. ( Palmer Luckey, Peter Theil, Joe Lonsdale = ENOUGH SAID, These are the guys.)

Kraken

Kraken is one of the longest-operating global cryptocurrency exchanges, offering spot and derivatives trading, staking, and institutional crypto infrastructure. The company has pursued a confidential IPO filing since late 2025. Its backers include Citadel Securities (Series D lead) and, in its most recent 2026 round, Deutsche Börse via a $200 million secondary investment. The moat is regulatory licensing breadth and institutional trust built over more than a decade, positioned as a Coinbase comparable with a TAM tied to global crypto adoption and market structure clarity. Valuation has been volatile — peaking near $20 billion in late 2025 before falling to $13.3 billion in April 2026 amid weaker crypto markets, a roughly 33% pullback. Catalysts include a resumed IPO process once market conditions improve; primary risk is crypto-price cyclicality directly compressing exchange revenue and valuation, as seen in the recent markdown. The clearest exit is a U.S. public listing, paused but not abandoned as of mid-2026.(Once the clarity act is passed, kraken will IPO)

Perplexity

Perplexity operates an AI-powered answer engine and agentic search platform (including its Comet browser and Personal Computer product), founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. Backers include NVIDIA, SoftBank, Jeff Bezos, Accel, IVP, NEA, Bessemer, Sequoia, and Databricks, alongside a notable angel roster (Yann LeCun, Andrej Karpathy, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant). The moat is a rapidly iterating consumer and enterprise product layer built atop frontier models, targeting the TAM of search, browsing, and knowledge-work automation. Valuation climbed from $9 billion to $18 billion in early 2025 and reached $20 billion by September 2025, with ARR reportedly jumping 50% to $450 million following its usage-based pricing launch in April 2026. CEO Srinivas has stated no IPO plans before 2028, favoring continued private capital raises; risk centers on foundation-model dependency and intensifying competition from Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft Copilot. A long-dated IPO remains the base-case exit.(IMHO PERPLEXITY Will Be Acquired, hopefully by Apple)

Apptronik

Apptronik builds Apollo, a humanoid robot designed for manufacturing, logistics, and eventually healthcare and home applications. It emerged from the Human Centered Robotics Lab at UT Austin in 2016, led by CEO Jeff Cardenas. Backers include Google (also a DeepMind Gemini Robotics partner), B Capital, Mercedes-Benz, PEAK6, AT&T Ventures, John Deere, and the Qatar Investment Authority. The moat is a strategic partnership with Google DeepMind for Gemini Robotics foundation models plus early manufacturing partnerships, positioning it against Tesla’s Optimus and Chinese humanoid entrants in a TAM spanning industrial labor automation. Valuation roughly tripled from an initial Series A mark to approximately $5.3 billion in a February 2026 extension round, on almost $1 billion in cumulative funding. Catalysts include commercial pilot deployments scaling in 2026-2027; risk includes humanoid-robotics commercialization timelines historically running longer than projected and intense capital competition from well-funded rivals. Exit is likely a future IPO alongside the broader embodied-AI wave.

Prometheus

Prometheus (formerly Project Prometheus)

Prometheus builds “physical AI” — AI systems applied to manufacturing, robotics, and industrial design — founded in November 2025 by Jeff Bezos, who serves as co-CEO, alongside Vik Bajaj, a Stanford professor and former co-founder of Alphabet’s Verily.

 The company launched with $6.2 billion, partly funded by Bezos himself, then closed a $10 billion Series A in April 2026 at a $38 billion valuation with JPMorganChase and BlackRock participating but no lead investor. Just seven weeks later it closed a $12 billion Series B at a roughly $41 billion valuation, adding Goldman Sachs, DST Global, and Arch Venture Partners to the cap table and pushing total funding past $18 billion.

-Its moat is Bezos’s manufacturing and logistics operating experience combined with Bajaj’s deep-tech research background, targeting a TAM spanning industrial automation, robotics, and AI-driven manufacturing redesign. The company is also reportedly assembling a separate large-scale holding vehicle to acquire firms expected to be disrupted by industrial AI.

Catalysts include continued rapid capital deployment and Bezos Expeditions’ broader 2026 AI investment spree; risks include the venture’s early stage, an unproven physical-AI product roadmap, and reliance on a two-person leadership structure. Given its Wall Street-heavy investor base (JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman), a future IPO or acquisition rollup strategy appears to be the intended long-term.

Lightmatter

Lightmatter designs photonic (light-based) computing chips and interconnects aimed at solving the AI data-center bandwidth and power bottleneck, founded in 2017 by Nicholas Harris, Darius Bunandar, and Thomas Graham as an MIT spinout. Backers include T. Rowe Price, GV (Google Ventures), and Fidelity. Its moat is proprietary silicon-photonics IP replacing copper interconnects inside and between AI accelerator racks, targeting the TAM of next-generation AI data-center networking as electrical interconnects hit physical limits.

Valuation nearly quadrupled from $1.2 billion (December 2023) to $4.4 billion in an October 2024 Series D, on $850 million raised to date. Catalysts include design wins with hyperscale AI infrastructure buyers as bandwidth constraints intensify; risk includes competition from established optical-networking incumbents and the capital intensity of chip manufacturing. Exit is most likely acquisition by a chip or hyperscaler player, or an IPO alongside the AI-infrastructure supply chain.

Shield AI

Shield AI develops autonomous military aircraft and the Hivemind AI-pilot software stack, founded in 2015 by brothers Brandon Tseng and Ryan Tseng along with Andrew Reiter. Backers include Advent International, JPMorganChase’s Security and Resiliency Initiative, Blackstone, L3Harris Technologies, Hanwha Asset Management, Andreessen Horowitz, and ARK Invest.

The moat is Hivemind, an AI autonomy layer deployable across multiple aircraft platforms rather than a single hardware product, giving it a software-defined edge in the broader autonomous-warfare TAM. Valuation jumped 140% to $12.7 billion in a March 2026 Series G ($1.5 billion equity plus $500 million preferred), up from $5.3 billion just a year earlier.

Catalysts include expanding U.S. Air Force and allied contracts; risk includes reliance on defense procurement cycles and geopolitical budget swings. Like Anduril, an IPO is the probable long-term exit as defense-tech public listings gain momentum.

Loft Orbital

Loft Orbital provides “space infrastructure as a service,” hosting third-party payloads on shared satellite buses to let customers deploy space missions without building their own satellites. Founded in 2017 by Pierre-Damien Vaujour and Antoine de Chassy, backers include Tikehau Capital, Axial Partners, Bpifrance, Temasek, BlackRock, and Foundation Capital. Its moat is a shared-satellite-bus model that dramatically lowers the cost and time to orbit for government and commercial customers, addressing a TAM spanning Earth observation, communications, and national-security space missions. The company raised $170 million in a January 2025 Series C co-led by Tikehau and Axial Partners, though it has not disclosed a formal valuation since its 2021 Series B mark of roughly $550 million; total lifetime funding stands near $330 million-plus. Catalysts include growing government space-infrastructure demand amid rising satellite launch cadence; risk includes launch-provider dependency and payload customer concentration. Exit path likely runs through acquisition by a larger space prime or eventual IPO as the space-infrastructure sector matures.

Honorable Mention: Chariot Defense

Chariot Defense builds battlefield power systems and a command-and-control platform for distributed electric power on the battlefield, founded by Erin Price-Wright and emerging from stealth in mid-2025. Its $34 million Series A was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from DCVC, General Catalyst, Shield Capital, and Trenches Capital, following an earlier $8 million seed backed by General Catalyst and XYZ Venture Capital, with total funding of $41 million.

The moat is addressing an underserved niche — resilient, mobile power generation and distribution for modern battlefields — as electrification of military hardware accelerates, tapping into the broader defense-tech TAM. As an early-stage company, risk is elevated given its small funding base relative to peers like Anduril and Saronic, but rapid a16z backing signals high-conviction, early-mover potential; the path to exit remains distant, likely acquisition by a larger defense-tech platform or continued private scaling toward a future raise.