Research/Research note
The most private ETFs don't say so
We found 18 US ETFs holding stakes that have no listed market price, $1.7bn in all: shares in companies that are still private, and SpaceX held through private vehicles (SPVs). The largest stakes sit in funds whose names say nothing about it: a quality stock fund that is 15% Kalshi, a space fund that is 18% SpaceX held through a private vehicle.
What is being compared
Every US-listed ETF we found holding a stake in a company that is not publicly traded, plus SpaceX shares held through a private vehicle. We found them in two ways: the latest holdings filing every ETF in our book makes to the SEC, which flags holdings valued by a model rather than a market price, and the issuers' own daily holdings files, which also cover funds too new to have filed. Each fund's figures are from its issuer's holdings file. Positions under 0.5% of a fund, closed-end and interval funds, and bond funds whose only holdings are defaulted debt or suspended shares are left out.
Who holds private companies
The list runs from funds built for it to funds that hold one stake. XOVR, ERShares' Private-Public Crossover ETF, is the most private: 17.9%, nearly all of it SpaceX. Tema's funds hold one private company each, through a special purpose vehicle, and in large slices: TOLL 15.4% Kalshi, ARMY 13.9% Anduril, LAZR 9.3% Anthropic. ARK's three largest funds each hold OpenAI and Kalshi, about 5% of each. The biggest dollar stakes are in large funds where the slice is small: ARKK holds $369m, iShares' BAI $217m and T. Rowe Price's TCAF $170m, which includes a stake in Waymo.
How much of each ETF is private companies
Share of each fund in stakes with no listed market price. Pick a company to see which funds hold it. Hover for the holdings, click to open the fund's page.
SpaceX is a special case. It listed on Nasdaq on June 12, but NASA, XOVR and AGIX still hold most of their SpaceX through vehicles that cannot be sold on an exchange. NASA values its vehicle at the full SpaceX share price; XOVR takes 2.5% off for the lock-up. The chart shows those stakes separately.
What the name says, and what the fund holds
Fifteen US ETFs have "private" in their names. Two of them hold private companies: XOVR and KraneShares' AGIX. Three, from State Street, hold private credit arranged by Apollo. The other 10 hold none. Some buy listed lenders and listed private equity firms, one tracks private equity returns with listed stocks, and two buy bonds backed by loans that trade like any other bond. KraneShares' "Public-Private" emerging markets fund, KEMQ, holds only listed shares, apart from three Russian ADRs written down to zero.
| What they hold | ETFs |
|---|---|
| Private companies | XOVR 17.9%, AGIX 6.8% |
| Private credit arranged by Apollo | PRIV 22%, PRSD 20%, PRAB 42% |
| Nothing private | KEMQ, PCMM, PCLO, HYIN, VPC, PCR, PSP, PEX, LBO, GTPE |
Who sets the price
A private stake has no listed market price, so each fund values its own, often at what it paid until a new funding round or a model says otherwise. The same company can sit at very different values in different funds.
One company, several values
Value per share each fund puts on its stake, from its holdings file. One dot per issuer. Hover for the funds and share class. Stakes held through vehicles are left out, because a unit is not a share.
Some of a gap can be the security: a later series can carry rights an earlier one does not. But that does not explain all of it. Each manager follows its own valuation policy, and one may simply be on an older funding round.
Why now
Filings for ETFs built around private companies have jumped this year. We read every new-fund registration since October 2024 that mentions pre-IPO companies and kept those where private companies are the point of the fund or a stated part of it. There was one in all of 2025. There have been 22 in 2026: 2x funds on Anthropic, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anduril and Figure AI, funds holding the AI companies including the private ones, and Defiance's Pre-IPO Leaders ETF, filed September 4.
New-fund filings built on private companies
Registration filings (485APOS) for US ETFs, by quarter, read and classified by StoryVector.
Funds are buying too. ARK added OpenAI to its three largest funds in April and Kalshi in September. AGIX announced Nuro in May and Ayar Labs in July, and has added four more private companies since. Tema launched DICE in September with a tenth of it in Kalshi and Polymarket.
Private credit, briefly
State Street's three Public & Private funds hold loans and asset-backed debt arranged by Apollo: PRIV 22%, PRSD 20% and PRAB 42% of each fund on October 13. Unlike the company stakes above, Apollo has agreed by contract to give the funds firm bids on those holdings during each trading day and to buy them back at those bids, up to a level set to cover a week of heavy redemptions. In PRIV's last SEC filing, 5% of the fund was valued by a model.
The bottom line
Private companies are now inside 18 US ETFs, $1.7bn in all, and the largest stakes are in funds whose names do not say so, while most funds that do say "private" hold nothing private. Nobody trades these stakes, so each fund sets its own value on them, and the same company can carry very different values from one fund to the next. The filings point to more on the way.
Notes and method
Peer group: every US-listed ETF holding at least 0.5% of its assets in a company that is not publicly traded, or in SpaceX through a private vehicle that cannot be sold on an exchange. Found from each ETF's latest SEC holdings filing (N-PORT, holdings valued at fair value Level 3), refreshed October 13, 2026, for every ETF StoryVector tracks, and from issuers' daily holdings files. Excluded: closed-end and interval funds, CLO funds, and Level 3 holdings that are defaulted bonds, suspended foreign shares, warrants or contingent rights.
Figures: each issuer's published holdings file, all as of the close on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 (ARK and T. Rowe Price date that file October 14). Fund assets are the sum of the market values in each file. Value per share is the market value the fund reports divided by the shares it reports; for vehicles it is per unit. Kalshi in XOVR and Anduril in XOVR are held through vehicles.
Funds named "private": the 15 US ETFs with "private" in the name, excluding exchange-traded notes, read from each fund's holdings. The ten with nothing private: KEMQ, listed stocks (plus three Russian ADRs written down to zero); PCMM, loan-backed bonds (traded); PCLO, AAA loan-backed bonds (traded); HYIN, listed lenders (BDCs) and REITs; VPC, listed lenders (BDCs) and CLO funds; PCR, listed lenders (BDCs); closing Oct 30; PSP, listed private equity firms; PEX, listed private equity firms and listed lenders (BDCs); LBO, listed private equity firms and listed lenders (BDCs); GTPE, listed stocks and a swap tracking private equity returns. State Street figures are each fund's Apollo-sourced share on its own website.
Filings: every 485APOS since October 1, 2024 that uses the term pre-IPO, each read and classified by StoryVector. Filings that mention pre-IPO only in boilerplate, distributor lists, biographies or general permissions are not counted. The list is in our research files.