1Password founders sold a $75M stake as part of a $100M secondary sale, valuing the company at $6.8B, the same valuation as its $620M Series C in January 2022
1Password founders have agreed to sell a $75 million stake to a fund established earlier this year by Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith and Accel partner Ryan Sweeney. LinkedIn: Matthew Nordby . Mastodon: @ianb@mastodon.well.com LinkedIn: Matthew Nordby : Excited to announce our partnership with 1Password as they embark on their next phase of growth! The Flume Ventures team looks forward to working alongside David Faugno & Ryan Smith. … Mastodon: Ian Betteridge / @ianb@mastodon.well.com : Nothing against 1Password, which I used to use and like, but on what planet is a company that makes a password manager worth SIX POINT EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS? — https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
1Password’s funding arc moved from its first external Accel-led round in 2019 to a $2B valuation in 2021, then to the $620M Series C that set its $6.8B mark in 2022. The new transaction provides an unusual read on how that private-company mark is holding up.
The buyer group includes an Accel partner, extending an existing connection between 1Password and one of its early institutional backers. The transaction matters chiefly as a liquidity event at an unchanged valuation rather than as a new primary financing.
First-order effects
- 1Password’s founders receive liquidity through the $75M stake sale, while Flume Ventures gains an ownership position as part of the broader $100M secondary transaction.
- The $6.8B price establishes that this secondary sale was executed at the same valuation as 1Password’s 2022 Series C, rather than resetting the company’s reported private mark.
Second-order effects
- Existing holders gain a current transaction reference point for their stakes, but the secondary structure does not itself add operating capital to 1Password.
- For security-software investors, the deal separates liquidity from fundraising: mature private companies can create a path for sellers without needing to establish a higher valuation through a new primary round.
Third-order effects
- If similar transactions continue, secondary sales could become a more important mechanism for founder and early-investor liquidity in privately held software companies whose valuations have not moved materially since earlier funding rounds.
- The durability of late-stage private valuations may increasingly be tested by actual secondary-clearing prices, not only by the marks attached to headline fundraising rounds.
The trend: Private software companies are using secondary transactions to deliver selective liquidity while preserving—or testing—valuations set in earlier financing cycles.