Tracking when private companies are nearing a sale, recap, or financing event has always been a guessing game. With thousands of sponsor-backed firms spread across sectors and geographies, most deal teams are forced to react after the market moves.
Investors, bankers, and service providers struggle to know which private companies are gearing up for a transaction or capital raise. Signals are scattered, opaque, and nearly impossible to track across thousands of PE- and VC-backed businesses.
Dakota centralizes those signals (holding periods, funding rounds, platform acquisition dates, ownership changes, and exit timing patterns) into one predictive transaction-readiness tool. Instead of waiting for headlines, users can see which companies are showing the strongest likelihood of pursuing a sale, recapitalization, or new financing before the market knows.
Below is today’s list of five PE- or VC-backed companies that, based on their hold period, financing stage, and last transaction date, appear to be credible candidates for a sale or next-round raise.
Nothing is guaranteed, but these companies fall squarely within the timing windows where sponsors typically look to generate liquidity or secure additional capital.
Sourced from Dakota Sponsor Backed Companies.
1. Bending Spoons
Bending Spoons is an Italian technology conglomerate founded in 2013 and headquartered in Milan. The company specializes in developing and acquiring mobile applications, managing them for long-term ownership. Notable products include Evernote, Komoot, Meetup, Remini, StreamYard, and WeTransfer. Bending Spoons has expanded its portfolio through strategic acquisitions, aiming to enhance its product offerings and market presence.
- Sector: Information Technology
- Industry: Software
- Last known transaction date: Series D, announced in February 2024
- Major sponsors/backers: Led by Durable Capital Partners.
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Bending Spoons’ Series D completed in February 2024 places the company approximately 18–24 months past its last major financing by late 2025 into 2026. At this point, sponsor-backed growth platforms often begin exploring strategic capital, secondary liquidity, or M&A opportunities, particularly as scale and operating performance mature and multiple monetization paths come into focus.
2. Rippling
Rippling is a workforce management platform that integrates HR, IT, and finance operations into a unified system, enabling businesses to manage employee data, payroll, benefits, and IT resources seamlessly.
- Sector: Information Technology
- Industry: Custom Enterprise
- Last known transaction date: Series G, $450M announced in May 2025.
- Major sponsors/backers: Coatue, Founders Fund, Greenoaks, Dragoneer
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Rippling’s $200M Series F announced in April 2024 places the company roughly 18–24 months removed from its last major capital raise. At this stage, late-stage, sponsor-backed platforms often see heightened activity around strategic minority investments, secondary liquidity, or acquisition discussions, particularly as scale, revenue visibility, and public-market comparables come further into focus.
3. Formance
Formance is an open-source, cloud-native infrastructure platform that enables developers to build and operate complex financial applications. By providing a modular and agnostic financial backend, Formance allows businesses to create bespoke fund flows using their preferred financial partners, thereby enhancing flexibility and scalability in financial operations.
- Sector: Information Technology
- Industry: Software
- Last known funding round: Series A, $21M, announced January 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: PayPal Ventures, Portage Ventures, Y Combinator, Hoxton Ventures, Axeleo Capital
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Since completing its January Series A, Formance has had time to deploy capital, deepen its product offering, and build early customer momentum. As the company approaches its first year post-financing, it is entering a natural inflection point where additional capital, a strategic partnership, or a broader transaction could support the next phase of growth and market expansion.
4. Effect Photonics
EFFECT Photonics is a vertically integrated optical systems company specializing in integrated optics solutions for telecom, datacom, and emerging industries. Their products, including coherent pluggable modules and sub-assemblies, aim to provide sustainable, cost-efficient, and scalable bandwidth solutions.
- Sector: Information Technology
- Industry: Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment
- Last known funding round: Series D, $38M, announced March 2024
- Major sponsors/backers: Led by Innovation Industries Strategic Partners Fund, backed by Dutch pension funds PMT and PME, along with co-investor Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund and participation from other existing investors.
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Effect Photonics raised its Series D in March 2024 and has since had meaningful time to advance commercialization and scale deployments with key customers. As the company moves further past this financing and into a more mature phase of growth, it is approaching a natural point to consider a strategic minority investment, late-stage financing, or an M&A transaction to support broader market expansion and manufacturing scale.
5. Token Security
Token Security is a cybersecurity company specializing in securing AI agents and non-human identities (NHIs) within enterprise environments. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company offers a platform that provides real-time visibility, control, and governance over AI agents and machine identities across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. Their key products include AI Agent & MCP Server Discovery, AI Agent Ownership & Accountability, AI Agent Access Control & Right-Sizing, and Traceability in a Multi-Agent Ecosystem. In November 2025, Token Security was recognized as one of The Information's "50 Most Promising Startups of 2025" in the Security & B2B category for pioneering identity-first AI security.
- Sector: Information Technology
- Industry: Software
- Last known funding round: Series A, $20M, announced January 2025.
- Major sponsors/backers: Notable Capital, Check Point, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Shlomo Kramer, TLV Partners, Undisclosed Angel Investors, and Venafi
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Token Security’s $20M Series A announced in January 2025 places the company over a year past its most recent capital raise. As venture-backed companies reach this stage, it is common to see increased exploration of follow-on growth capital, strategic partnerships, or inbound acquisition interest, particularly as the business demonstrates product-market fit and early scale.
Use Dakota’s Sponsor Backed Company Intelligence to Spot Likely Exits Before the Market Does
Dakota’s private company data gives you a real-time view into thousands of sponsor-backed companies, including platform acquisition dates, funding rounds, parent sponsors, add-on activity, and sector categorization.
Instead of guessing where companies are in their lifecycle, you can instantly identify which ones are approaching the typical timing windows for a sale or recap.
Fully integrated into Dakota Marketplace, this dataset enables deal sourcers, investor relations teams, and allocators to anticipate transactions, build targeted outreach lists, and stay ahead of market announcements, every single day.
To explore more companies likely to transact, book a demo of Dakota Marketplace!
