Augment Markets

Augment Markets operates a platform for buying and selling shares in private companies - among them SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI - in amounts ranging from $5,000 to $100m. Founded in 2022, the firm describes its service as a "Robinhood for the private markets", bringing together buyers, sellers and brokers to execute transactions online. It is a registered broker-dealer and Alternative Trading System, and positions itself within a private capital markets segment it puts at some $150bn, against an industry backdrop in which companies now remain private for an average of 12 years.

The company's offering rests on two disclosed products. Block Market presents a centralized order book showing who is buying what, at which price and at what size; the underlying technology matches buyers and sellers and guides trade execution on Augment's financial rails. Collective aggregates buyers into special-purpose vehicles to purchase shares in bulk, handling execution, contracts and taxation so that participants sign documents, fund the investment and decide simply yes or no on each offering. A third product, AugmentX, is described only as undisclosed. By the firm's account, it has executed trades approaching 1,000, with volume of nearly $300m.

Augment employs more than 20 people, up from a launch team of five in autumn 2023. The engineering work spans fintech platform development, order-matching technology, transaction-execution rails, SPV investment vehicles and broker-dealer and ATS infrastructure. Its founders are Noel Moldvai, with ten years in engineering, and Adam Crawley, with 15 years in private capital markets.

The company is distributed, with headquarters in Austin, Texas and offices in San Francisco and New York City. It describes its culture as small and adaptable, with minimal process and maximal communication, and quarterly fly-outs to Austin alongside twice-yearly week-long all-team offsites. It lists liquidity, user experience and education among its priorities.