Mutual funds holding private stock must file what they think it is worth, share by share. Learn to read a Form N-PORT mark, and to judge a valuation by how far the funds carrying it disagree.
| Source | What it is | Can you verify it? |
|---|---|---|
| Funding round | The price the newest preferred round was sold at, multiplied across all shares | No. Announced by press release; terms are private. |
| 409A valuation | An appraisal of the common stock, done for employee option pricing | No. Not published. Structurally conservative. |
| Marketplace quote | An indicative price on a secondary platform | Partly. You see a price, never the size or the terms. |
| Fund mark | A registered fund's own fair value for the position it holds, filed with the SEC | Yes. Named filer, dated period, public accession. |
Only the last row is checkable by someone outside the company, and that is the entire reason this course can exist. A fund that owns private stock has to tell its regulator what it thinks that stock is worth, quarter after quarter, under valuation procedures its board approved and its auditor looks at.
"Checkable" is not the same as "right". A fund mark is an estimate made under rules, by people with an incentive to be defensible rather than accurate. Lesson 3 measures the gap. Accept the estimate as a starting point, never as a price.
The disclosure gives you a share count and a fair value. That is all you need:
Here is that arithmetic on the most heavily covered company in the current data set — picked by how many funds report it, not by name, so this example stays honest between builds:
| Fund | Instrument | Shares | Fair value | Per share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ALGER FOCUS EQUITY FUND 0000940400-26-038531 | DATABRICKS, INC | 552,095 | $132,894,787 | $240.71 |
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund 0000035402-26-006129 | DATABRICKS INC SER G PC PP | 437,958 | $105,215,030 | $240.24 |
Franklin Growth Opportunities Fund 0002071691-26-023300 | Databricks, Inc., Series G | 338,280 | $83,202,034 | $245.96 |
ALGER SPECTRA FUND 0000940400-26-038536 | DATABRICKS, INC | 325,466 | $78,342,921 | $240.71 |
Across all 51 marks the median lands at $240.71, with a low of $240.24 and a high of $262.31 — a spread of 9.2% of the median. These funds do not all hold the same instrument, which is flagged on the company page: a median across different series is a rougher number than a median across one.
Series F preferred, Series B preferred and common stock are three different securities in the same company. Preferred carries liquidation preference — paid first in a sale — so it is worth more per share than the common underneath it, sometimes far more. A mark tells you about the security named next to it and nothing else.
A fund reports as of a quarter end and files weeks later. A mark is always a look backwards. When a company raises, gets written down or announces a listing after that date, the mark has not heard about it yet. Every figure on our pages carries its period date for this reason.
One fund's mark is one valuation committee's opinion. Three funds from two unrelated advisers is three opinions reached separately, and that is the published bar for coverage: a company is published only with >= 3 funds from >= 2 unrelated asset managers, a median of at least $0.01 a share, and marks spanning no more than 150% of the median. Coverage capped at 75. Everything that falls short is listed in belowBar with the reason..
Wrapper vehicles make fund counts lie if you are careless. Several feeder funds in one family holding the same position are not independent evidence — they are one adviser counted four times. That is why the bar counts unrelated advisers, not just funds.
When several funds mark the same company, the width of their disagreement tells you how soft the inputs are. Two live extremes from the current data set:
Both of those companies clear the same evidence bar. Clearing the bar means the number is sourced; the dispersion beside it is what tells you how much to trust it. Never quote the median without it.
The figures above come from reading 400 fund filings over a 150-day window. That produced 6,756 individual marks naming 696 distinct private issuers — of which 20 cleared the bar and 676 did not.
The rejects are published with their reason on the marks page. Most fail for the dullest possible cause: one fund holds them and nobody else does. A company appearing in 696 names but not in the coverage table is not being hidden from you — it simply has one opinion behind it, and one opinion is not evidence.
A fund's filing lists 1,250,000 shares of a private company's Series F preferred with a fair value of $41,250,000. What is the fund's mark per share, and what does it apply to?
Why does a mark reported by a registered fund carry more weight than a private-marketplace quote?
Two funds both hold the same company and the same series, but one marks it 40% above the other. What is the most useful conclusion?
Every company, every contributing fund, every accession number and period date — with the below-the-bar list published alongside.