In April 2009 Sequoia Capital put $585,000 into Airbnb, for about 58 million shares bought at a little over one cent each. The company had a bare-bones website, 2,500 listings and 10,000 registered users. For a fund that counts Apple, Google and Instagram among its past investments, that cheque is a rounding error.
The picture on December 10, 2020 was different. The stock was priced at $68, opened at $146, touched $165 and closed at $144.71, a 113% gain: a market capitalisation of $86.5 billion when trading began and a fully diluted valuation of $100.7 billion, against the $18 billion of its last private round in April 2020 and the $31 billion of 2017. The offering raised $3.5 billion.
What the coverage of the debut tends to lose is not the first-day pop. It is that Sequoia had spent roughly $280 million in total for almost 82 million shares, at an average of $3.40, and that on debut day the stake was worth close to $12 billion. Anyone buying at the open paid $146, more than 14,000 times the seed price. Airbnb was founded in 2008 and spent more than twelve years as a private company: nearly the whole curve on which its value was built stayed off the market, across seed, Series A, B, C and beyond, open only to venture funds, employees and a small circle of early investors.
In 2026 that early stretch of the curve is being sold to retail investors too, but through very different instruments. Akka, a French platform authorised by the AMF as a crowdfunding service provider under reference FP-2024-9, offers stakes in late-stage private companies such as Anthropic or Epic Games, in deals starting at 300 euros. Access runs through dedicated investment vehicles created by the platform; the stated horizon is two to three years to a liquidity event, and the risks are spelled out plainly: illiquidity, no guarantee on exit timing, possible total loss of capital.
The fee structure is just as explicit. Five per cent of the amount invested is withheld by the vehicle to cover its running costs, and that can rise by up to another five per cent for transaction costs; a 15% commission applies to realised gains on investments made from March 16, 2026, on top of an annual or multi-year membership fee.
Bitget took another route: tokens instead of stakes. IPO Prime, launched in April 2026 and run with the platform Republic, distributes through stablecoin subscriptions instruments minted on Solana that mirror the economic performance of a private company. The first, preSPAX, is linked to SpaceX: it is not equity, it carries no voting rights or ownership, and SpaceX has not authorised the product. Subscriptions start at 100 USDT and, once distributed, the tokens trade on an in-house market, liquidity the traditional private market does not offer. The first round drew more than 14,000 participants, with $177 million committed and $61.1 million actually subscribed. Since June 2, 2026 there is also a perpetual future on ANTHROPICUSDT with up to 20x leverage, for those who would rather trade the pre-IPO valuation story than wait for the listing.
The catch is that the most sought-after companies never signed off. Anthropic updated its investor warning page: any transfer of its stock without board approval is void, special purpose vehicles cannot hold its shares, and eight intermediaries, including Forge Global and Hiive, were named as unauthorised. OpenAI used near-identical language, saying such sales will not be recognised and carry no economic value to the buyer. Forge Global responded that it never moves private shares without issuer approval and is working with Anthropic to have its name removed.
The market reacted fast: PreStocks tokens tied to Anthropic fell 34% in a week and the OpenAI ones 39%, while the platform dashboard showed an implied Anthropic valuation above $1.3 trillion against roughly $23 million in assets held. Demand for private-market exposure is real: on secondary venues Anthropic is priced near $1 trillion, against the $380 billion of its most recent primary round. But selling private stock to the public only happens with the issuer's consent, and that consent is precisely the variable retail investors do not control.
In 2020 retail bought Airbnb at $146, 113% above the IPO price and more than 14,000 times the seed price. In 2026 it can buy in far earlier, but it is buying economic exposure rather than shares, paying in rights and in liquidity, and on a condition that is not its to set. On debut day the analyst Paul Schatz advised doing nothing the moment trading opened. The real question, six years on, is not whether pre-IPO beats IPO: it is whether the buyer knows exactly what is being bought.
Sources
- Yahoo Finance — Reuters, Airbnb valuation surges past $100 billion: finance.yahoo.com
- Yahoo Finance — Airbnb IPO: opens at $146 per share: finance.yahoo.com
- CNBC — Airbnb IPO: ABNB starts trading on the Nasdaq: cnbc.com
- Markets Insider — Sequoia Capital bought Airbnb shares for $0.01: markets.businessinsider.com
- Sequoia Capital — Airbnb IPO: Embracing the Adventure: sequoiacap.com
- Akka — Investor Information: akka.app
- Akka — Investi in startup e aziende pre-IPO: akka.app
- Bitget Academy — Where to buy pre-IPO stocks with crypto: bitget.com
- Yahoo Finance — Bitget offers retail synthetic SpaceX exposure: finance.yahoo.com
- CoinDesk — Bitget brings pre-IPO tokens to the masses: coindesk.com
- Yahoo Finance — Anthropic warns unauthorized stock sales are void: finance.yahoo.com
- CoinDesk — Anthropic, OpenAI tokens plunge as pre-IPO transfers are invalid: coindesk.com
