PISCES Platforms Update: Wayve Marks a Milestone as a Fourth Operator Enters the Sandbox

In our previous article, published in April 2026, we compared the three approved PISCES platform operators, the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market, JP Jenkins's Private Market, and Asset Match PISCES, and explored how private companies might choose between them. Since then, the landscape has shifted materially. Wayve, the autonomous driving technology company valued at over $1.5 billion, has completed a permissioned auction on the LSE's Private Securities Market, the most high-profile PISCES transaction to date. A fourth operator, Vestd, has received FCA approval and a pipeline of high-profile exploring the platform continues to build. Here, we take stock of what has changed and what companies considering PISCES need to know.

Vestd: The Fourth Approved PISCES Operator

On 27 April 2026, just six days after Asset Match received its own approval, the FCA issued PISCES Approval Notice to Vestd Ltd. Vestd is the fourth firm to be authorised to operate a PISCES platform.

How Vestd Differs from Existing Platforms

Vestd's Rulebook, dated May 2026, reveals an operating model that departs from the other three platforms in several respects.

Operator-led investor onboarding: The other three platforms each require an intermediary layer: Registered Auction Agents on the LSE, Approved Intermediaries on JP Jenkins, authorised Members on Asset Match. Vestd does not. Instead Vestd itself performs investor categorisation, appropriateness assessments, and cooling-off administration directly through its platform. For companies whose shareholders are primarily employees or individual investors without existing broker relationships, this could be a significant practical advantage.

Financial eligibility thresholds: The LSE sets a high bar (at least two of three criteria involving £10 million fundraises, £20 million total assets, or £10 million turnover). JP Jenkins and Asset Match set none. Vestd sits between the two: a company must show either a fundraise of at least £2 million in the past five years (debt or equity, arm's length) or a combination of five years since incorporation and £5 million annual turnover. Audited financial statements are required in all cases, though Vestd retains discretion to substitute these requirements.

A 23-day pre-event timeline: This is the longest lead-time of any PISCES platform. The Rulebook prescribes a structured sequence: application at t-23, governance review and disclosure upload, Vestd's own review of the disclosures, publication to investors at t-10, a three-day Q&A window, a three-day company response period, a further three-day investor cool-off period, auction day at t, and settlement at t+1. By comparison, the LSE requires a minimum of ten business days, JP Jenkins seven, and Asset Match five.

T+1 settlement without CREST: The LSE and JP Jenkins both settle via CREST on a T+2 cycle. Vestd settles on T+1, using its own nominee structure and client money account. The practical consequence is that companies do not need their shares admitted to CREST, removing a step that can be a genuine barrier for earlier-stage businesses. The same applies to Asset Matchin that companies do not need to have their shares admitted to CREST.

Investor protection. Vestd goes further than the other platforms on retail investor safeguards. The Rulebook mandates a personalised risk warning (using the investor's name), an explicit acknowledgment before any first trade, a mandatory appropriateness assessment (investors who fail are barred until they pass), a 24-hour cooling-off period for first-time investors, and a blanket prohibition on investment incentives. Qualifying individuals must also sign a “Restricted Investor Statement” confirming they understand the 10% net assets guidance limit.

PISCES in Practice: From First Trades to Flagship Transactions

The sandbox is no longer theoretical. Three companies have now completed PISCES trading events across two platforms, and the trajectory, from early proof-of-concept to billion-dollar employee liquidity event, tells a compelling story about the platform's potential.

LSE Private Securities Market — Oxford Science Enterprises (via TPEIC)

The LSE's first PISCES auction took place on 25 March 2026. The company was Oxford Science Enterprises, accessed through the Tradable Private Equity Investment Company (TPEIC), a listed vehicle valued at approximately £1.3 billion. It was a permissioned auction. The TPEIC structure is worth dwelling on: rather than the private company participating directly, an intermediary investment vehicle served as the PISCES company, giving investors exposure to what is, in substance, a portfolio of venture-stage and growth-stage businesses affiliated with the University of Oxford. For the LSE, this was a statement of intent, PISCES as institutional-grade infrastructure for large, complex transactions.

JP Jenkins Private Market — QPlay (Outsmarted)

JP Jenkins got there first though. Its initial PISCES trading event completed on 24 March 2026, one day ahead of the LSE, involving QPlay, the maker of the Outsmarted board game. The order window opened on 18 March, with uncrossing on 24 March over a five-day intermittent trading window. The contrast with TPEIC is stark. QPlay is a consumer products company at a much earlier growth stage, and the fact that it could access PISCES at all reflects JP Jenkins's decision not to impose financial eligibility thresholds. Where the LSE pitched its first event at the institutional end of the market, JP Jenkins demonstrated the breadth of what PISCES can accommodate.

LSE Private Securities Market — Wayve

The most significant PISCES transaction to date completed yesterday. Wayve, the London-headquartered autonomous driving technology company backed by SoftBank and Microsoft, held a permissioned auction on the LSE's Private Securities Market to provide liquidity to current employees with vested equity. The transaction followed Wayve's US$1.5 billion funding round.

The Wayve transaction is notable for several reasons. It is the first PISCES event involving a company of genuine unicorn scale, a business valued at over US$1.5 billion, operating at the frontier of AI and autonomous vehicle technology. It demonstrates that PISCES can function as a practical employee liquidity mechanism for high-growth technology companies, precisely the use case that HM Treasury and the FCA envisaged when designing the sandbox.

It is also worth noting the structure of the event. This was a permissioned auction, restricted to current employees with vested equity rather than open to all eligible investors. For companies considering PISCES as an employee retention or reward tool, the Wayve model provides a clear precedent: a company can hold a controlled, invitation-only trading event that allows staff to realise value from their equity without opening the shareholder register to external investors or triggering a broader liquidity event.

The Pipeline: Moneybox and Others

Moneybox, the digital savings and investment platform, has been reported as considering PISCES for secondary liquidity. Moneybox is precisely the type of company the sandbox was designed for: a venture-backed fintech scale-up with a substantial customer base, too established for purely bilateral private transactions but with no immediate appetite for a full public listing. If Moneybox proceeds, it would add further weight to the view that PISCES is becoming a credible staging post for high-growth UK businesses on their path to public markets or, indeed, as a permanent alternative to them (although any capital raising will need to be done outside of the platform).

What We Know and Don't Know About Trading Activity

One consequence of PISCES being a private market is that trading details stay private. Neither platform, nor either company, nor any intermediary has disclosed public pricing data or transaction volumes for the TPEIC or QPlay events. The FCA's Sourcebook requires post-trade data (price, volume, and time of execution) to be made available to participants in the relevant event, but not to the wider market. Advisers and investors accustomed to the transparency of AIM or the Main Market should adjust their expectations accordingly.

Practical Takeaways for Issuers

The early trading events, and the platform rulebooks themselves, point to a number of practical considerations for companies weighing up PISCES.

Transaction structuring is flexible. The TPEIC model on the LSE shows that companies need not participate directly. An investment vehicle holding shares in a private company can itself be the PISCES company, giving investors indirect access to the underlying portfolio. Fund managers wishing to offer LPs or co-investors a secondary liquidity window, without the portfolio company shouldering the disclosure burden, should take note.

Employee liquidity is a core use case. Consider a company with vested employee share options under EMI, CSOP, or unapproved schemes. That company could structure a PISCES trading event specifically to allow employees to exercise and sell. Following HMRC's technical note of November 2025, a PISCES trading window can serve as an exercisable event for new EMI and CSOP options, and the government has committed to legislation permitting existing options to be amended to include PISCES as an exercise trigger. In practice, a company might hold a quarterly or annual auction timed to coincide with option vesting dates, preparing its core disclosures, uploading them to the platform's disclosure portal, responding to investor questions, and running the auction, all without triggering the obligations of a public offering.

Settlement mechanics matter more than you might expect. The choice of platform determines whether shares need to be dematerialised in CREST (the LSE and JP Jenkins) or whether settlement can run through the platform's own infrastructure (Vestd's nominee model, Asset Match's bilateral approach). Companies still operating with paper share certificates, or those with constitutional restrictions on transfer that have not been updated, should allow adequate lead time to resolve these issues well before their first event.

Do not underestimate the disclosure workload. The PISCES core disclosure requirements, covering 17 categories from business overview through to related party transactions, are less demanding than a prospectus or AIM admission document, but they are not trivial. Companies will need to prepare financial information (including audited accounts or, where these are more than 12 months old, interim management accounts), disclose directors' transactions and trading intentions, describe their capital structure and shareholder rights, and set out any price parameters and the basis on which they were determined. The quality of this disclosure is the company's responsibility, neither the FCA nor (in most cases) the PISCES operator will verify it, and companies face statutory liability for inaccurate or misleading core disclosures under the PISCES Sandbox Regulations.

Updated Platform Comparison

To assist companies and their advisers in navigating the expanded PISCES landscape, we have updated our PISCES Platform Comparison Chart to include Vestd as the fourth operator. The revised chart compares all four platforms across 24 features, including regulatory status, eligibility criteria, trading formats, disclosure mechanisms, fee structures, settlement arrangements, and investor protection measures.

The choice of platform will depend on a company's particular circumstances, but some broad patterns are emerging. Larger, more mature companies seeking the credibility of a recognised exchange will gravitate towards the LSE's Private Securities Market, notwithstanding its higher costs and eligibility thresholds. Growth-stage and venture-backed companies that value flexible trading formats and low barriers to entry are likely to find JP Jenkins the most accommodating, its dual format of monthly auctions and continuous trading windows remains unique. Asset Match appeals where companies want a structured, intermediated auction with compliance monitoring built into the process. And Vestd offers something genuinely different: an operator-led model with lower financial thresholds and integrated settlement, suited to companies whose shareholders may not have existing broker relationships.

Looking Ahead

A year into the sandbox, the picture is more than encouraging, it is starting to look like validation. Four operators are approved. Three companies have completed live events, including one at genuine unicorn scale. The range of operating models, from the LSE's institutional infrastructure to Vestd's operator-led approach, reflects the FCA's deliberate choice to allow meaningful differentiation within a common framework, and that differentiation is now giving companies real options.

The Wayve transaction, in particular, moves PISCES beyond proof-of-concept. When a company valued at US$1.5 billion, advised by leading international law firms and supported by established financial intermediaries, uses the platform to deliver employee liquidity, it becomes harder to dismiss PISCES as a niche experiment. For other high-growth private companies and their shareholders, employees, and advisers, the question is shifting from "whether PISCES works" to "which platform is right for us."

The choice of platform is a strategic decision. It turns on the company's size, stage, and shareholder profile; on whether those shareholders have broker relationships; on the desired frequency and format of trading events; on appetite for disclosure beyond the FCA minimum; and on practical questions around settlement. Our updated comparison chart is designed to assist with that analysis.

The sandbox runs until 5 June 2030, and the government has signaled that it will consider making PISCES permanent if the experiment succeeds. On the strength of the first year, and of yesterday’s Wayve milestone, that prospect looks increasingly credible.

For further information or assistance with joining a PISCES platform, including reviewing constitutional documentation, advising on eligibility, preparing disclosures, or navigating the onboarding process, please contact the Corporate team at Charles Russell Speechlys.

This article has been prepared as a general guide only and does not constitute advice on any specific matter. We recommend that you seek professional advice before taking action. No liability can be accepted by us for any action taken or not taken as a result of this information.