VC Funds Are for Sale—at a Discount

The year 2025 was supposed to bring a cash windfall to venture capital backers, as companies that had delayed going public finally made the leap.

That hasn’t happened. With a roller-coaster stock market delaying many long-anticipated initial public offerings, the limited partners in VC funds have been finding new ways to cash out of their stakes in private tech firms. Some are selling their ownership of VC funds. The VC funds in turn have been putting their own startup stakes up for sale. That means ownership of hot startups like Stripe and Databricks are sometimes up for grabs.