Contrary to the idea that all capital is good capital, elite founders strongly dislike SPVs. They want to know exactly who is on their cap table and view SPVs as a risky, obfuscated way to assemble capital that compromises control.

Anduril's COO highlights a dangerous trend of "wildcat" secondary market brokers selling access to company shares they don't possess. These deals often involve multiple layers of SPVs with hidden fees. He warns that many retail investors will discover their shares don't exist during a major IPO, leading to significant financial losses.

Founders largely dislike Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) because they mask the true identity of investors on their capitalization table. This lack of transparency is seen as a risk, leading companies like Anduril to actively combat what they call "SPV hucksters."

Large LPs are increasingly investing directly in top-tier private tech companies, circumventing traditional VC funds. They gain access through SPVs with minimal fees, creating a competitive dynamic where VCs must justify their value proposition against direct, low-cost access to the most sought-after deals.

Many secondary market SPVs don't grant investors direct ownership of shares. Instead, an employee holds the stock in a separate entity and sells shares of that entity. This structure can allow the employee to sell the underlying stock without the SPV investors' consent, introducing a major risk.

Matt Grimm of Anduril highlights that many secondary share offerings are structured as "forward contracts," which he calls notoriously hard to settle and explicitly disallowed by his company's bylaws. This means investors in such SPVs face extreme counterparty risk and may never actually take possession of the shares.

Cash-rich hyperscalers like Meta utilize Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to finance data centers. This strategy keeps billions in debt off their main balance sheets, appeasing shareholders and protecting credit ratings, but creates complex and opaque financial structures.

Meta is using off-balance-sheet "special purpose vehicles" (SPVs) to finance its AI data centers. This financial engineering obscures the true scale of its capital commitments by keeping massive debt and assets off its main balance sheet, a tactic explicitly compared to the controversial methods used by Enron.

Companies like Meta are partnering with firms like Blue Owl to create highly leveraged (e.g., 90% debt) special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to build AI data centers. This structure keeps billions in debt off the tech giant's balance sheet while financing an immature, high-demand asset, creating a complex and potentially fragile arrangement.