Goodfin Wire #18: Baseten Billion, News 2.0, IPO Countdown, and more

The $2 trillion moment and what comes next.

SpaceX's IPO didn't just price — it redefined what "private company" can mean, closing out at a $2 trillion public debut and turning pre-launch-night believers into public shareholders. Meanwhile, Anthropic's confidentially filed, OpenAI's staying deliberately quiet (no roadshow, no date), and Databricks is sitting 2026 out entirely. The IPO window is open, but conviction is splitting by name, not by moment.

Elsewhere, the deal flow hasn't slowed down: Baseten's inference business just tripled its valuation in five months, European defense tech is pulling nine-figure rounds, and Airwallex is building the payment rails for AI agents before most investors have caught up to the idea. That's the private markets pulse right now — AI infrastructure, defense, and fintech all compounding at once, whether or not the headlines are watching.

Inside this edition: a summer soiree in LA, YC founders talk business, an updated News experience, and a poll about where pre-IPO investing goes in the next 5–10 years — because access was not the only constraint. Conviction is. Let's go.

→ Stanford Mixer in LA—We’re sponsoring a party to kick off the summer
→ Goodfin’s SpaceX IPO Celebration—Investors and partners celebrate space in style
→ YC Spring Demo Day—Hear from founders on Goodfin IG
→ Personalized News—Power your research with our updated news engine
→ Member Poll: What’s your take on pre-ipo investing in 5-10 years?

Join Goodfin and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs of SoCal for their summer mixer in Westwood. Think of it as a room full of builders, investors, and operators who move first on what's next — exactly the kind of people worth knowing. Cardinal-themed cocktail in hand, private patio at STK, good conversation guaranteed. Request Your Spot

Goodfin hosted a SpaceX Pre-IPO party at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, where Goodfin members, investors, and partners gathered the evening before SpaceX's IPO — surrounded by a new exhibition on space, a lot of excitement, and the kind of energy that only comes when a bet you believed in is about to go public.

SpaceX has been one of the defining deals on the Goodfin platform but also a milestone for the private markets industry. The members who accessed it did what institutional investors have always done — got in early, stayed patient, and showed up for the moment.

That's what Goodfin is built for: giving a new generation of investors a seat at the table for the opportunities that matter most.

Congratulations to everyone in our community who invested, believed, and made it to pre-launch night. H

Goodfin was on the ground at YC's Spring Demo Day. This batch skewed defense tech, hardware, AI agents, and developer tools — a signal of where founder energy (and capital) is heading next. We caught up with founders straight off the pitch stage to talk business models, traction, and what YC actually taught them. Hear it direct from them on our Instagram and check out our YC Fund offering.

As AI became central to how our members discover and act on private-market information, the news experience needed to be simpler, more personal, and woven directly into G. We've rebuilt News from the ground up so the news you see is what matters most to you. Feature updates include:

1. An AI-first News home

News now lives under Ask G, so reading the news and asking about it happen in the same place. The page leads with what's moving and gets more relevant the more you use it.

2. Market Summary

Recaps of recent news for major private companies, right at the top. Expand any company to read the full briefing and jump straight to the original sources.

3. Trending by industry

See what's heating up across private markets grouped by sector. View AI, Space, Crypto, Fintech, and more, ranked by how much news broke this week. Open any industry to see everything trending inside it.

4. Follow what matters

Follow any company to tune your feed. One follow personalizes For You, fills your Following view, and keeps that company in the loop across every deal vintage.

Check out these and other updates in your account.

The signal that matters surfaced for you. Here's what our AI pulled from the noise this week:

1. Baseten raised $1.5 billion at a $13 billion valuation. Baseten is close to finalizing a $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, a 160% jump from the $5 billion valuation attached to its $300 million Series E just five months ago. Revenue has grown 20x and inference volume has grown 40x over the past year. The platform now processes over 1 billion inference calls per day across 87 clusters on 18 clouds. Customers include Cursor, Notion, Lovable, Harvey, and HubSpot. Read More

 2. Stark Defence raised €500 million at a €3.5 billion valuation. The maker of kamikaze drones, Stark raised €500 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund as private capital pours into European military technology. More than 80% of the capital goes toward manufacturing. The company holds a €269 million Bundeswehr contract and is scaling toward thousands of autonomous systems per month. Founded in 2024, Stark tripled its valuation in 18 months. Read More

3. Peregrine Technologies raised $250 million at a $6.8 billion valuation. The company  announced a $250 million Series D at a $6.8 billion valuation, led by Fifth Down Capital, Sequoia Capital, OG Venture Partners, and others. The company supports more than 400 agencies across North America serving more than 125 million people and doubled its customer base over the past year. Eight of the eleven 2026 FIFA World Cup host cities have deployed the platform for event security operations. Founded by former Palantir employees, Peregrine nearly tripled its valuation from $2.5 billion in 15 months. Read More

4. Airwallex raised $320 million at an $11 billion valuation. Airwallex closed a $320 million Series H led by Addition, with Baillie Gifford, QED Investors, T. Rowe Price, and Amex Ventures participating. The company reported $1.3 billion in annualized revenue growing 74% year over year and $287 billion in annualized transaction volume. It simultaneously launched T:0, an autonomous finance platform, and Airi, an agentic payment wallet built for AI agents needing regulated cross-border payment rails. Read More

5.  OpenAI has not held pre-IPO investor meetings or set an official listing timeline. No roadshow. No date. OpenAI's confidentially filed, but sources say investor meetings haven't even started — the timeline's still wide open. Altman's not blinking: the IPO happens when it makes sense, not on anyone else's clock. Read More

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50% Wait & See Mode 👀 Half of respondents chose “Watch the window'“, meaning conviction on the AI/pre-IPO opportunity isn't the hesitation; timing is. Members aren't debating whether to be in this cycle, they were waiting for SpaceX's first week to set the risk backdrop for everything behind it — Anthropic, OpenAI, and the rest of the 2026 pipeline.

Definitely not for the faint of heart.

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