Acquired by Charles Schwab for ~$660M ($45/share); announced Nov 2025, closed March 2026.
The rise & fall
8 moments · 2014–2026
The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2014
🌱
2014
Founded as Equidate
A marketplace for trading shares of private, venture-backed companies before they ever IPO — unicorns included.
Wikipedia
2021
🦄
2021
The SPAC deal makes it a unicorn
Motive Capital Corp agrees to take the private-shares marketplace public at a $2.0B valuation.
Businesswire
Mar 2022
📈
Mar 2022
The peak: a $2B SPAC debut$2B
The Motive Capital merger closes and Forge lists on the NYSE — a marketplace for unicorn shares, valued like one itself.
Businesswire
2022–23
2022–23
The private-market boom cools
Startup share prices reset, trading volumes shrink, and Forge's stock sinks with them.
Macrotrends
2023
💔
2023
Slips out of the club
The market cap falls below $1B as volumes stay thin.
Macrotrends
2022–25
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–25
Post-listing Glassdoor reviews described a top-heavy company drifting through layoff rounds and leadership reshuffles, strategy that never quite settled, and equity grants employees watched lose most of their value — though many praised their colleagues and the work-life balance.
Nov 2025
Nov 2025
Schwab comes calling
Charles Schwab agrees to buy Forge for about $660M — $45 a share.
Businesswire
Mar 2026
🤝
Mar 2026
Acquired by Charles Schwab for ~$660M$660M
The deal closes at a third of the debut valuation — the marketplace for fallen unicorns becomes one itself.
Businesswire
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Forge Global runs a marketplace for buying and selling shares of private, venture-backed companies — including, fittingly, many unicorns — and went public in March 2022 via a $2.0B SPAC merger with Motive Capital Corp. As the private-market trading boom cooled, its volumes and stock sank.
In late 2025 Charles Schwab agreed to acquire Forge for about $660M, closing in March 2026 — a third of its debut valuation, a marketplace for fallen unicorns that became one itself.
Source: Businesswire / FT Partners / Forge ($2.0B SPAC merger with Motive Capital Corp, closed March 2022; Charles Schwab acquisition ~$660M at $45/share, announced Nov 6 2025, closed March 2 2026)
Founders & leadership
Kelly Rodriques
CEO (since 2018, through the Schwab acquisition)
Still there — Chief Executive Officer · LinkedIn ↗
Sohail Prasad
founder & CEO (founded it as Equidate; Y Combinator 2012)
