SharesPost (Acquired by Forge Global)

Founded in 2009, SharesPost was a pioneer in creating a marketplace to provide liquidity for shareholders and investors in the pre-IPO technology sector. It operated as a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, offering a platform for buying and selling private company stock, managing private securities, and providing research on late-stage private companies. In 2020, SharesPost was acquired by its primary competitor, Forge Global. The merger combined the two leading platforms to create a single, more robust marketplace (Forge) for private market liquidity, serving investors, employees, and private companies by facilitating secondary transactions in pre-IPO equity.