The compression of private round timelines from months to days is not a cyclical pattern. It is a structural reorganisation of how consequential private capital allocations are determined — and which investors are present when they close.
A perspective from Open Doors Partners
The number that matters is not the valuation, the round size, or the syndicate composition. It is seventy-two hours. After that window closes, measured interest from qualified institutional investors in a top-tier private round drops by approximately eighty per cent. The decision window is not short by preference. It is short by design — and the design is now the market.
In 2022, the average private round took ninety days to close. By 2023, that figure had compressed to forty-five days. In 2025, the best deals — the rounds attracting the most consequential capital from the most recognisable names — close in three to seven days. That is a ninety-five per cent compression over three years. The pace is not returning to prior norms. The data does not support that reading.
The structural forces behind this compression are not mysterious. The first is due diligence. AI-assisted analysis has collapsed the time required to establish a credible preliminary view on a company’s financial position, competitive moat, and founder trajectory. Work that required weeks of analyst time now requires days. The constraint on deal velocity was never conviction — it was the time required to build conviction. That constraint has been substantially reduced.
The second force is supply. Series A deal counts fell seventy-nine per cent between Q1 2022 and Q1 2025. The market has not contracted uniformly; it has bifurcated. Capital pursuing genuinely high-quality opportunities is competing for a smaller set of them. When qualified supply falls and qualified demand persists, the assets that remain clear the market quickly. Eighty-nine per cent of successful 2024 seed rounds closed within one week. Seventy-three per cent of rounds that failed to close dragged beyond thirty days. The velocity differential is not noise. It is the signal.
The third force is information asymmetry — specifically, its erosion. In prior market structures, the time a round remained open served a function: it allowed institutional participants with less proximate relationships to learn the deal existed and conduct independent evaluation. That function has not disappeared, but it operates on a compressed timeline. The first-meeting-to-term-sheet interval fell eighty-two per cent year on year in 2025. The practical implication is that by the time a deal is discoverable through secondary channels, the primary allocation has frequently been determined.
The secondary market tells a parallel story. Total secondary volume has grown from sixty-three billion dollars in 2020 to two hundred and thirty-three billion dollars in 2025 — a two-hundred-and-sixty-nine per cent expansion in five years. GP-led secondaries specifically doubled between 2023 and 2025, moving from sixty-one billion to one hundred and sixteen billion dollars. These numbers do not describe a market correcting temporary illiquidity. They describe a market building infrastructure to manage structural illiquidity — a permanent feature of an environment where primary access has become more selective and the secondary route has become a consequential alternative path.
The sophisticated capital that participated in primary rounds at full optionality is, in part, creating the secondary market that less-proximate capital relies upon. Primary compression and secondary expansion are different expressions of the same underlying dynamic: access to the most consequential private companies is concentrating, and the market is organising itself around that concentration.
The family office data makes this explicit. Family office dealmaking fell to its lowest volume in a decade in the first half of 2025 — 7,199 transactions worth $439.6 billion — during the same period in which deal velocity reached an all-time high. The capital that moves through traditional processes, with extended evaluation timelines and multi-stakeholder approval structures, is being structurally excluded. Not through any deliberate act of gatekeeping. Through mechanics. The round is closed before the process is complete.
This is a significant development for a capital category that has, over the prior decade, substantially expanded its direct investing activity. The family office model was built for a market in which patience was a competitive advantage. The current market rewards proximity, not patience — and those are different things.
The sovereign wealth funds have recognised this. Nine of the ten largest sovereign wealth fund transactions in 2025 were co-investments, a notable shift from the passive minority participation model that dominated prior years. Sovereigns are repositioning specifically to gain access at the speed the market now requires. The instrument has changed because the timeline has changed.
Open Doors Partners is built around this reality. The firm’s approach to private market participation is structured to operate at the speed consequential rounds actually close — with established relationships, pre-formed conviction frameworks, and the operational capacity to move when the window is open rather than after it has closed. The intelligence that matters in this environment is the intelligence that exists before the process begins, not the analysis conducted while it unfolds.
At seventy-two hours, proximity is not a preference. It is the only thing that matters.
The time required to close a top-tier private round has compressed from ninety days in 2022 to three to seven days in 2025 — a ninety-five per cent reduction driven by AI-accelerated due diligence, reduced supply of consequential opportunities, and intensified competition among institutional capital for both.
Institutional investor interest in top-tier rounds declines by approximately eighty per cent after seventy-two hours, meaning capital without pre-existing relationships and standing conviction frameworks is excluded from primary allocation by mechanics, not intent.
Total secondary volume has grown from $63 billion in 2020 to $233 billion in 2025 as investors unable to access primary rounds at the speed they now close increasingly seek positions through secondary transactions instead.
Nine of the ten largest sovereign wealth fund transactions in 2025 were co-investments — a structural repositioning toward instruments that allow consequential capital to move at the speed primary allocations now require.
Open Doors Partners LLC does not publicly offer or solicit investment opportunities. All investments are made through private placements under Rule 506(b) of Regulation D. Accredited investors only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.