Pre-IPO market rankings

The Pre-IPO Market Becomes Less Top-Heavy

Activity across Augment became less concentrated in the Power 20’s highest-ranked companies in Q3’26.

As the markets broadened, the top six names by overall Power 20 rank accounted for just 16.2% of all platform activity, compared with 30% in Q2 and 47% in Q1, for the lowest share since the rankings began in Q4’23.

Separately, completed trades played a larger role in the market, representing 27.6% of all platform activity, up from 14.9% in Q2. Kalshi, ranked #13 overall in the Power 20, recorded six times as many completed trades as in Q2, an example of increased transaction activity beyond the highest-ranked names.

More than half of the Power 20 is now AI

AI companies occupied 11 of the 20 Power 20 places in Q3'26, up from just eight in Q2. Perplexity's exit was more than offset by the addition of Fireworks AI, Etched, Baseten, and Higgsfield.

AI companies accounted for 67.1% of Power 20 activity and 81.8% of its aggregate estimated market cap in the quarter, with activity at its highest share since these rankings began (see chart, below).

AI companies accounted for 77.2% of completed trades within the Power 20 in Q3’26.

Anthropic and OpenAI held the top two overall Power 20 ranks. Anthropic's completed trades increased 36%, while Cognition entered the overall top ten with a 68.0% price gain and a 17.6% increase in buy-side bids. Project Prometheus, a physical AI company, ranked first for both activity and completed trades across the Augment Markets platform.

Cognition and Replit both attracted more buy-side activity, with bids up 17.6% and 140.0%, respectively. Their share prices diverged: Cognition nearly repeated Q2's 68.9% gain with a 68.0% increase, while Replit’s estimated price per share fell 9.5%. Harvey and Skild AI, both selected as honorable mentions this quarter (see the “Honorable Mentions” section, below), posted price gains of 46.7% and 19.7%, respectively.

Three of the four new entrants supply AI infrastructure: Fireworks AI and Baseten help companies deploy and customize models for inference with a strong emphasis on open weight models, while Etched develops specialized inference hardware. Higgsfield, by contrast, is an AI application company focused on creative video generation. These four companies' admission further extends the rankings beyond the frontier labs building general-purpose models, OpenAI and Anthropic, and into the businesses serving and monetizing them.

Etched's 151.7% price gain meant it ranked first in the Power 20 for Q3 price appreciation. Baseten ranked third in the Power 20 for price appreciation with a 51.8% gain, and Fireworks ranked fifth in the Power 20 for price appreciation with a 32.6% gain. Bids for Etched reached 22.7x their Q2 level, while Baseten's rose 80.0%.

Among incumbents, Databricks reversed a 3.2% Q2 price decline with a 20.5% increase. Its 3.4% bid-ask spread was the narrowest in the Power 20. Crusoe's spread was 7.3%, while its price gain slowed from 54.6% to 6.0%.

Defense and Aerospace account for ⅕ of trades

Anduril, Shield AI, and Saronic all posted share price gains in Q3. Saronic ranked #2 in the Power 20 for completed trades and #4 in the Power 20 for activity. Across Augment, Saronic ranked #5 for activity. Defense and Aerospace companies accounted for 16.1% of Power 20 activity, 20.5% of completed trades, but just 3.3% of the twenty companies’ aggregate estimated market cap in Q3’26.

Saronic moved up two places to #14 in the overall Power 20 ranking as activity rose 89.7%. Its estimated share price gained 10.3% to $44.37. Anduril remained the highest-ranked defense company at #3 overall in the Power 20, with a 12.7% price increase. Shield AI's price appreciation accelerated from 3.2% to 11.7%, while its overall Power 20 rank moved to #12.

Outside the Power 20, Hadrian was selected as an honorable mention this quarter (see the Honorable Mentions section on page 23). It ranked #7 across Augment for activity, while bids reached 45 times their Q2 level. Impulse Space ranked #2 across Augment for activity, ahead of Anthropic, as bids rose 373.3% and its estimated share price gained 17.5%.

Fintech accounts for less than 10% of activity & value

Stripe, Revolut, Ramp, and Kalshi held overall Power 20 ranks of #5, #8, #9, and #13, respectively. Stripe reversed a 3.1% Q2 price decline with a 9.0% gain, while Ramp's 30.1% gain was approximately double Q2's 15%. Revolut's estimated share price rose 10.3%.

These four companies are being increasingly overshadowed by defense/aerospace and AI: they accounted for 9.7% of Power 20 activity, 2.3% of completed trades, and 9.2% of aggregate estimated market cap in Q3’26.

Kalshi's bids increased 42.9%, completed trades reached six times their Q2 level, and its 35.6% price gain ranked fourth in the Power 20 for price appreciation. Kalshi is the only prediction-market company in the Power 20 this quarter. Erebor, a technology-focused bank, was selected as an honorable mention this quarter (see the Honorable Mentions section).

Changing of the Guard: AI, Consolidation, and IPOs

The Power 20’s changing composition reflects several forces reshaping pre-IPO markets: weakening demand for some established software businesses, competition among AI-native companies, consolidation, and public listings. New AI infrastructure and application companies — such as Fireworks AI, Etched, Baseten, and Higgsfield in this edition — have increasingly filled the openings, making the rankings more AI-heavy even as individual AI names fall out.

Canva and Rippling’s departures in Q3’26 extend a changing of the guard that previously saw companies like Deel, Arctic Wolf, Cribl, and Discord leave the Power 20. For Canva and Rippling, buy-side interest weakened this quarter while completed trading remained limited. Their departures suggest commercial scale and an established venture pedigree are becoming less sufficient to maintain top ranks as AI-native and defense names crowd out demand.

Largest demand gains on Augment in Q3'26*

Ranked by increase in buy-side orders in Q3’26 versus Q2’26.

Being AI-native, however, does not guarantee a lasting place in the rankings. Glean and Lambda dropped from the rankings in Q4’25, and Perplexity followed in Q3’26 as other companies gained ground. Glean’s departure came despite substantial triple-digit revenue growth. Perplexity’s 4.2% share price gain this quarter trailed those of new entrants Etched, Baseten, and Fireworks AI by a significant margin. The rotation is occurring within AI as well as between AI and other sectors.

Consolidation has removed another group of prominent AI companies. Cursor departed in Q2’26 following SpaceX’s agreement to acquire it, after ranking #12 overall in Q1. SpaceX’s merger with xAI had already removed another leading AI name. NVIDIA’s technology-licensing and hiring deal with Groq, and Meta’s similar investment in Scale AI (alongside its recruitment of founder Alexandr Wang), preceded those companies’ departures from the rankings. These transactions illustrate how larger platforms are consolidating AI talent and technology into their businesses.

Public listings have also reshaped the private-company universe, with past Power 20 names like Figma and Klarna going public in 2025, followed by SpaceX and Cerebras in 2026.

Prometheus Leads Activity & Transactions

Project Prometheus ranked first for both activity and completed trades across Augment. Anthropic ranked #2 in Power 20 activity and #3 in platform-wide activity, behind Impulse Space. Etched, Saronic, Anduril, and Cognition completed the six most active Power 20 companies.

The six most active Power 20 companies accounted for 64.5% of Power 20 activity and 30.2% of all Augment platform activity. Among the ranked names, many saw strong demand increases: bids for Etched's shares reached 22.7x their Q2 level, while Cognition's increased a more modest 17.6%.

Saronic ranked #2 in the Power 20 for completed trades, just behind Project Prometheus. Anthropic and Crusoe also recorded increases in completed trades, up 36.0% and 23.1%, respectively.

Most active companies on Augment in Q3'26

Activity includes bids, asks, and completed trades on the Augment platform during Q3'26. Buy-side and sell-side orders are distinct from completed trades. Ties are broken by placing the company with more completed trades first.

Honorable Mentions

These eight companies were selected for honorable mentions in Q3'26 for their secondary-market activity, price movement, commercial traction, and news. Hadrian ranked first among the watchlist companies for activity, while Harvey ranked first among them for price appreciation.

Hadrian‍

Hadrian builds automated factories and manufacturing software for aerospace and defense. Bids reached 45 times their Q2 level, while total activity rose to 25x Q2 levels. Hadrian ranked seventh across Augment for activity and first among the honorable mentions for activity. Its estimated share price slipped 1.9% to $71.26. In August, it raised $1.37B at a valuation just below $8B to expand defense manufacturing.

Blue Origin‍

Blue Origin develops launch vehicles, rocket engines, and lunar infrastructure. It ranked #27 across Augment for activity in Q3. In September, NASA added New Glenn 9x4 to its Launch Services contract, making the larger rocket configuration eligible to compete for future missions. The company is also developing its Blue Moon lunar lander under a $3.4B NASA contract, giving the Artemis program a second provider alongside SpaceX to carry astronauts between lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface.

Harvey

Harvey provides AI software for legal and professional services work. Its estimated share price rose 46.7% to $53.77, implying a $17.6B market cap. Demand measured by the count of bids rose 40.0% QoQ, while total activity doubled. Harvey ranked #29 across Augment for activity. Sacra estimates that ARR exceeded $400M in August, and Harvey raised $550M at a $15.5B valuation in September.

Isomorphic Labs

Isomorphic Labs applies AI to drug discovery and molecular design, and is the first biotech company to make either the Honorable Mentions or Augment Power 20 lists. Bids increased 80.0%, while total activity rose 37.5%. It tied OpenEvidence and Physical Intelligence for #30 across Augment in activity. Its drug-design technology addresses a large market with long development cycles. As of September, Sacra reported no publicly named clinical candidate or clinical-trial timeline.

OpenEvidence

OpenEvidence provides physicians with an AI clinical evidence and decision-support platform. Activity rose 37.5%, tying it for #30 across Augment in activity. Its estimated share price fell 13.6% to $497.40. Sacra estimates that annualized revenue reached $300M in July, up from $150M at the end of 2025. A September financing valued the company at $15B. Its commercial case combines physician adoption and advertising monetization.

Skild AI

Skild AI, which reported crossing $100M in ARR in September 2026, develops a general-purpose foundation model intended to control different kinds of robots. Demand, measured by bid count, rose 33.3% QoQ, while its estimated share price gained 19.7% to $92.83, implying a $20.0B market cap. Skild AI ranked #50 across Augment in activity, so it is still a name with a relatively shallow market.

Erebor

Erebor is a technology-focused bank serving startups and digital-asset businesses. Bids tripled from Q2, while total activity reached four times its Q2 level. Sacra estimates that annualized revenue rose from $31M in March to $112M in July as deposits expanded.

ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs develops speech, voice, dubbing, and audio-generation technology, as well as end-to-end enterprise voice agents for applications like customer support. Sacra estimates that ARR reached $600M in June, up from $330M at the end of 2025, supported by enterprise adoption.

Methodology

For further detail, the ranking methodology includes 8 metrics in total. Companies were ranked by the following factors, normalized to a 0 to 1 scale:

• Total volume as measured by the aggregate dollar size of bid and ask orders on the Augment platform in Q3'26.

• Total activity was based on the number of bid-ask orders and the number of trades.

• Companies' revenue and revenue growth estimates are collected from Sacra, a third-party market data provider. Companies' metrics were normalized and ranked on a 0 to 1 scale according to annualized revenue and revenue growth in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

• Ratio of asks to bids is the number of asks divided by the number of bids

• Spreads were measured as the negative of volume-weighted average quotes and the differences between these on the ask and bid side, as a percentage of the asking quote average, for each name in Q3'26.

• Price change was measured as the % difference ending price for each name in the previous quarter and the ending price in the current calendar quarter.

• The companies’ previous rank, measured as the inverse of the last quarter’s rank from 1 to 1/20

Prices provided in this report are derived from Caplight, which aggregates secondary market data and uses a proprietary algorithm to estimate pricing. To ensure the most accurate reflection of the end of quarter price, Augment may apply a market-based adjustment to the Caplight price. These adjustments are made when our internal desk observes verifiable trade data, firm bids/offers, or actionable indications of interest (IOIs) that deviate materially from modeled estimates. This dual-track approach aims to reconcile historical data with prevailing market prices.

In the next step, all the percentile ranks were added together with adjustments made to account for companies with gaps in the data, e.g. missing 2024 and/or 2025 revenue. Price spread, revenue growth, and the previous quarter's aggregate rank are weighted approximately twice as much as the other factors, while revenue dollar amount is weighted one-tenth as much.

Unlike our Power 20 ranking, our "Honorable Mentions" list is based on fewer factors, namely price movement, activity, and activity increases QoQ. The activity includes transactions involving SPVs and forwards. The ranking is meant to identify companies seeing noticeably elevated buy and sell interest in the quarter compared to previous quarters.

Our overall activity rankings, “Most Active Companies in Q3'26” also include transactions involving SPVs and forwards, as well as trades. The ranking is meant to identify companies seeing noticeably elevated buy and sell interest in addition to trading activity in the quarter compared to previous quarters. For this measure, trades and bid-ask activity are weighted equally. The “Highest % Price Increases in Q3'26” table excludes companies with low activity, meaning companies with less than 3 bids or asks in the quarter.