"That's the motivation for the round," Perret said. "We think it's important to give our employees options to sell and the ability to have liquidity, especially given that Plaid has been private for so long."
Plaid is the latest in a string of late-stage, private deals designed to enable employees to cash out in private markets. Ramp, DataBricks, OpenAI and Stripe have all announced secondary financings that were designed to let some employees get liquidity. Few of those companies seem eager to wade into public markets. Recent volatility around stocks and lackluster performance of recent IPOs, including CoreWeave's last week, have kept some companies on the sidelines.
"Volatility is definitely going to be one of the key factors," Perret said, adding that it was too early to assess IPO market conditions for Plaid.