“Can a private-market secondary trading platform become the definitive infrastructure layer for private securities access — and ultimately be absorbed into a major retail brokerage?”
Founded in 2014 as Equidate, Forge built a secondary marketplace to let employees and early investors in pre-IPO companies liquidate shares before an IPO. After rebranding to Forge Global in 2019, it expanded into marketplace infrastructure, proprietary private-market data, and custody services. It went public via SPAC in 2022. In November 2025, Charles Schwab announced it would acquire Forge for $660M to bring private-market access to retail and advisor clients, marking the culmination of Forge's evolution from a niche liquidity platform to a full-stack private markets infrastructure provider.
Forge Global uses Alloy for KYC and identity verification.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Forge Global's stack: KYC (Alloy); Spend / AP (Airbase).
Forge Global is founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, USA.
Forge Global has raised $85M+ in total (latest round: Series B (expanded), 2019; valuation: $660M acquisition by Charles Schwab (2025)).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Forge Global and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.