New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is getting again into the secondaries recreation.
The Silicon Valley-based VC raised greater than $468 million for NEA Secondary Opportunity Fund, in line with an SEC submitting. The fundraise closed on July 3, in line with a supply aware of the matter, however hasn’t acquired a lot consideration. The fund raised capital from greater than 60 restricted companions together with the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, which dedicated $20 million to the fund, in line with assembly paperwork.
NEA didn’t reply to a request for remark.
This isn’t NEA’s first foray into the secondaries market, an asset class which entails shopping for current stakes in an organization or one other fund. The agency was a secondaries participant earlier than spinning out its secondaries follow in 2018 as a result of it wasn’t a registered funding advisor, that means not more than 20% of its property may very well be held on the secondary market. That spinout grew to become NewView Capital, which remains to be helmed by Ravi Viswanathan, an NEA investor for practically 15 years earlier than launching NewView.
NEA grew to become a registered funding advisor in 2023, a supply aware of the matter advised TechCrunch, and thus NEA might reenter the secondaries market with an in-house fund.
It’s time to have capital to spend money on the secondaries market. Recent knowledge from secondary knowledge monitoring platform Caplight information greater than $706 million being invested into direct secondaries offers – or transactions involving an organization stake – within the first half of 2024. That places this yr on observe to surpass final yr’s $1.1 billion buying and selling quantity complete.
Part of these offers are occurring the standard approach, with traders shopping for earlier homeowners’ shares with the consent of the corporate. Other traders are elevating particular objective automobiles (SPVs), or automobiles raised to again a particular asset, to realize entry to secondaries offers of sizzling corporations. In rarer circumstances, some traders are even shopping for into different companies’ SPVs to get a bit of the motion.
NEA isn’t the one agency elevating a fund devoted to the shopping for of secondary shares proper now. Just a few months in the past, StepStone raised $3.3 billion for the most important devoted enterprise secondaries fund of all time. Earlier this week, G Squared raised $1.1 billion for a late-stage fund with plans to place nearly all of the capital towards secondary transactions. Last fall, Industry Ventures raised $1.45 billion for the technique.
