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. Spiritus
Spiritus is a climate technology company specializing in Direct Air Capture (DAC) solutions to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their innovative approach combines a unique sorbent material with a modular system, enabling scalable and cost-effective carbon removal. Spiritus aims to make DAC a practical tool in combating climate change.
- Sector: Industrials
- Industry: Commercial Services & Supplies
- Last known transaction date: $30M Series A announced in March 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: Aramco Ventures (lead), Khosla Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, TDK Ventures
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Spiritus’ $30M Series A announced in March 2025 places the company roughly 12–18 months removed from its most recent financing by mid to late 2026. At this stage, venture-backed climate and energy platforms often begin evaluating follow-on growth capital, strategic partnerships, or acquisition interest, as commercialization efforts scale and strategic relevance within the energy transition ecosystem becomes clearer.
View all private company data in Dakota Marketplace.
2. hawx
Hawcx is a cybersecurity startup focused on passwordless authentication, offering a developer-friendly platform designed to replace passwords with a seamless, secure user experience. The company emphasizes ease of integration, strong security guarantees, and improved usability versus traditional passwords and passkey-based approaches, aiming to reduce both breach risk and operational overhead for enterprises.
- Sector: Technology
- Industry: Cybersecurity / Identity & Access Management
- Last known transaction date: Pre-Seed, $3M announced in March 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: Engineering Capital (lead), Boldcap
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Hawcx’s $3M pre-seed round announced in March 2025 places the company approximately 12–18 months removed from its initial financing by mid to late 2026. At this stage, early-stage cybersecurity and identity platforms often begin evaluating follow-on seed or Series A capital as enterprise adoption grows, product-market fit becomes clearer, and strategic interest from larger security and identity vendors emerges amid ongoing consolidation in the IAM ecosystem.
View all private company data in Dakota Marketplace.
3. Synctera
Synctera is a fintech platform that connects financial institutions, such as community banks and credit unions, with fintech companies to facilitate the development and scaling of banking products. By streamlining operations and ensuring regulatory compliance, Synctera enables both banks and fintechs to collaborate effectively, offering services like bank accounts, card programs, and seamless money movement solutions.
- Sector: Financials
- Industry: Financial Services
- Last known funding round: Series A, $15M announced March 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: Fin Capital (lead), Diagram Ventures, 1st & Main Growth Partners, Evolution Equity Partners, True Equity
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Synctera’s $15M Series A announced in March 2025 places the company roughly 12–18 months removed from its most recent financing by mid to late 2026. At this stage, venture-backed fintech infrastructure platforms often begin evaluating follow-on growth capital, strategic partnerships, or acquisition interest, as platform adoption, ecosystem integrations, and revenue momentum continue to build.
View all private company data in Dakota Marketplace.
4. Carpool Logistics
Carpool Logistics is a vehicle shipping marketplace that enables multiple clients to share space on a single truck, reducing transportation costs and emissions. Founded in July 2021 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the company serves automotive auctions, dealers, OEMs, fleet operators, and individual customers by optimizing vehicle logistics through bundled shipments and real-time tracking.
- Sector: Industrials
- Industry: Transportation & Logistics / Automotive Logistics
- Last known funding round: Series A, $12M announced March 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: Wavecrest Growth Partners (lead), CarMax, Devin Daly and Michael Quigley (Impel founders), David Metter
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: Carpool Logistics’ $12M Series A announced in March 2025 places the company approximately 12–18 months removed from its most recent financing by mid to late 2026. At this stage, venture-backed logistics and marketplace platforms often begin evaluating follow-on growth capital, strategic partnerships, or acquisition interest as customer adoption expands, unit economics improve, and strategic relevance to larger automotive and transportation players becomes clearer.
View all private company data in Dakota Marketplace.
5. BioClec
BioClec is a biotechnology company headquartered in Milan, Italy, specializing in the development of innovative therapies for Alzheimer's disease. The company focuses on creating disease-modifying treatments that target microglia, the brain's immune cells, aiming to revolutionize Alzheimer's disease treatment. BioClec emerged from Sofinnova Partners' €165 million Biovelocita II accelerator program, which supports early-stage biotech companies. The company is currently in its discovery phase, dedicated to addressing the urgent unmet medical needs of Alzheimer's patients worldwide.
- Sector: Health Care
- Industry: Biotechnology / Therapeutics
- Last known funding round: Seed / Company launch backing announced March 2025
- Major sponsors/backers: Sofinnova Partners (via Biovelocita II)
- Why timing suggests a near-term transaction: BioClec’s launch in March 2025 with backing from Sofinnova Partners positions the company at the earliest stage of its development cycle. For discovery-stage biotech companies emerging from venture studio or accelerator platforms, the next 12–18 months are typically focused on advancing preclinical validation and target de-risking, often leading to a formal seed or Series A financing, strategic research partnerships, or licensing discussions as initial data milestones are achieved.
View all private company data in Dakota Marketplace.
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!
