Market notes · August 2026
Lately, we’ve been focusing a lot on SPVs tied to funding rounds: Prometheus, Positron, Fireworks AI, Tenstorrent, Lightmatter, Mercor, Atoms, Destinus. These SPVs offer access to companies that block direct transactions, and they ensure you’re paying the same net price as every other investor in that round. But they often come with fees.
So this week I’m highlighting five direct opportunities — actual shares, no fund wrapper, no management fee or carry. Direct deals are rarer and move faster, so if any of these are on your list, let me know and I’ll share what’s live.
Hadrian
I’m writing this from Kyiv, where the case for rebuilding Western defense manufacturing capacity isn’t theoretical, it’s visible out my window. Hadrian builds highly automated “factories as a service” producing precision components for aerospace and defense customers, including a partnership with Anduril. The company raised in January at a $1.6 billion valuation in a round led by T. Rowe Price, with Founders Fund, Lux, a16z, and Altimeter participating, and press reports in June pointed to talks for a much larger round — which the company disputed. Of all the reindustrialization plays, this is the one I’m following most closely.
Zipline
The world’s largest autonomous drone delivery company just crossed 2 million commercial deliveries and raised roughly $800 million across two closes this year at a $7.6 billion valuation, backed by Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Valor, and Tiger Global. U.S. deliveries have been growing ~15% week-over-week for months, with expansions into Houston and Phoenix underway. This is one of the few frontier names where the product is already boringly operational — food, retail, and medical deliveries running daily across five countries. I’ve been recommending it for years and know the transfer process and seller landscape very well.
1X Robotics
The OpenAI-backed humanoid maker whose NEO home robot opened pre-orders last fall, with first deliveries expected this year. Unlike Figure’s industrial-first approach, 1X is betting on the household — and it signed a deal with investor EQT to deploy up to 10,000 robots across EQT’s 300+ portfolio companies through 2030. The company has reportedly been raising at a valuation more than ten times its last round, though nothing has been confirmed closed. Worth keeping in mind: most NEO tasks today are still teleoperated by human pilots, so the autonomy story is a bet, not a fact. But we have distressed sellers so this might be interesting for those who believe Europe will ensure at least one non-US, non-Chinese robotics manufacturer thrives.
Glean
Enterprise AI search, built by ex-Google search engineers, and one of the fastest revenue ramps in software: reportedly ~$100M ARR in early 2025 to ~$300M by May 2026. Glean’s permissions-aware knowledge graph indexes everything from Slack to Jira, and its newest pitch — cutting enterprise AI token costs by ~30% — resonates with CFOs tightening AI budgets. Last priced at $7.2 billion in a June 2025 Series F; no new round despite revenue tripling since. The open question is whether best-of-breed beats Microsoft Copilot bundled “free” into licenses enterprises already pay for. We work with a handful of very early employee engineers in need of liquidity.
Kraken
The veteran crypto exchange (founded 2011) confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in November, paused amid choppy crypto markets, and is now reportedly targeting a listing later this year. Here’s what makes it interesting: after raising at a reported $20 billion valuation, secondary market pricing has come down meaningfully from those highs. For investors who believe in the listing, that gap is the trade. Regulatory overhang cleared substantially after the SEC dismissed its enforcement action in early 2025.
If you would like to receive more information on any of these opportunities, just let me know.
Sincerely, Chad Gracia Registered Representative, Rainmaker Securities
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Risk factors
Investments in the Securities are speculative and involve a high degree of risk. Companies engaging in private placements may be early stage and high risk. You should be able to afford the increased risk of loss with such investments, including the potential of a total loss.
An investor in the Securities should have little to no need for liquidity in the foreseeable future. Unlike an investment purchased on a stock exchange, an investment in a private placement is highly illiquid. You will most likely be investing in restricted securities, may have difficulty finding a buyer for the securities when you can resell and, as a result, may need to hold the securities indefinitely.
Limited disclosure information. Companies engaging in private placements are not required to provide the disclosure that would be required in a registered offering. You may have less information to make an informed investment decision than, for example, stock purchased on a stock exchange, including information that may help you determine whether the price asked for the investment is a fair price. Potential buyers or sellers of the Securities should seek professional counsel prior to entering into any transaction.