Clear Street launches pre-IPO platform with margin on private stakes
Clear Street is giving accredited investors access to Databricks and other late-stage tech firms before they go public, offering a rare margin lending feature as brokerages race to serve demand for private market wealth creation.
Clear Street is launching a platform that allows accredited investors to buy stakes in late-stage private companies, kicking off with AI software firm Databricks. Databricks was valued at $188 billion earlier this month. The move represents a strategic pivot for the prime brokerage startup, which paused its own listing plans earlier this year.
The platform's key differentiator is its lending capability. Because Clear Street handles asset servicing and risk management internally, it can offer margin loans against pre-IPO holdings—a feature typically absent in private markets. "The goal is to remove friction and give more people the ability to invest in more products," said CEO and co-founder Uri Cohen.
The offering targets a structural shift in equities, where companies are staying private longer and capturing more of their value appreciation before a public debut. "A lot of the wealth creation has been in private markets, and more and more retail investors and smaller investors want to be part of that," Cohen said. Clear Street is not alone in spotting this demand; Goldman Sachs recently created a similar platform for wealthy clients and family offices.
The fintech firm plans to list as many as 30 startups on the platform by the end of the year. Target companies are mostly tech firms valued between $5 billion and $20 billion that are six months to two years away from an IPO. To support the effort, Clear Street is launching dedicated private company equity research headed by analyst Owen Lau, aiming to introduce public-market-style transparency to opaque private valuations.
This expansion follows Clear Street's decision in February to shelve its own IPO due to market volatility that hit broker and fintech multiples. The firm, valued at nearly $12 billion in a private funding round earlier this year, subsequently bolstered its liquidity with a $400 million investment-grade bond offering. "We're in a position of strength, so the decision was shelved for better timing," Cohen said. "We're definitely going to look towards a '27 listing, depending on the market conditions."
