A look at the banking habits of pre-IPO tech employees - a population sitting on significant illiquid wealth - based on data from thousands of Equitybee funding transactions.
Equitybee funds tech employees exercising their stock options in pre-IPO companies - think SpaceX, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe. When an employee needs to exercise options but doesn't have the capital to cover the strike price and tax bill, Equitybee steps in.
Investors fund the exercise in exchange for a share of the future upside. The employee keeps their equity stake without writing a personal check. This puts us in a unique operational position: at the moment of wire transfer. Every transaction flows through a bank account - the employee's real, primary account. Across thousands of such transactions, a clear picture emerges of where this cohort actually banks.
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Financial markets have long used the term HENRY - High Earner, Not Rich Yet - to describe people with strong incomes but limited liquid wealth. Typically this means high earners in their 30s and 40s building careers, who haven't yet accumulated significant investable assets. The pre-IPO tech employee is a distinct and more financially interesting variant. Yes, they are often HENRYs on a cash basis - their salary is comfortable but their net worth largely sits in equity. But unlike the classic HENRY, they are not merely on a path toward wealth. They are already holding it. They just can't access it yet.
Consider a software engineer holding 100,000 options in a well-known pre-IPO company at a strike price of $2, with a current share price of $40. On paper, about $4,000,000 of value - that's a life-changing sum - but it's inaccessible until an exit event. They may have $100,000 in their checking account and still qualify as a HENRY. That gap between balance sheet wealth and liquid wealth is exactly what makes this cohort so strategically important to financial institutions.
When we look across our transaction data, the distribution is striking. A small number of large banks dominate, with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo together accounting for well over half of all incoming wires.
Based on thousands of Equitybee wire transactions. Showing top 10 of 130+ institutions. Note: First Republic Bank was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in May 2023; transactions to First Republic prior to that date are counted separately.
The most interesting insight isn't just which banks appear - it's how that ranking compares to the overall US banking market. When you line up Equitybee's top 5 against the top 5 US banks by deposit share, a meaningful divergence emerges.
Methodological note: The Equitybee data represents an aggregate of transactions processed between March 2020 and April 2026. The FDIC figures reflect deposit share as of June 30, 2024. Because these datasets cover different time periods, this comparison is intended to be directional and illustrative - not a precise apples-to-apples measurement. Readers should not treat the percentage gaps as exact figures. Additionally, M&A activity during this period (e.g., JPMorgan Chase's acquisition of First Republic Bank in May 2023) may affect how individual institution figures are interpreted.
JPMorgan Chase is overrepresented among tech employees relative to its national footprint. More striking are the absences: Citibank and US Bancorp, which together hold a substantial share of national deposits, barely register in our data. Meanwhile Charles Schwab punches well above its weight, reinforcing the thesis that this cohort skews toward financially sophisticated, investment-oriented relationships. USAA's strong showing may reflect, in our view, the significant overlap between the military-affiliated tech workforce and defense-adjacent companies such as SpaceX and Palantir - though we have not drilled down specifically into employer data to confirm this.
Perhaps the most telling data point is the strength of Charles Schwab - the fourth-ranked institution. Schwab is not a traditional primary banking institution; most people don't get their paycheck deposited there. Its appearance in the top five suggests something important: a meaningful portion of this cohort is financially sophisticated enough to have a brokerage account as their primary or secondary banking relationship.
That aligns with what we'd expect. People actively managing stock option decisions are not passive savers. They have investment accounts. They think about asset allocation. They are exactly the client profile that wealth management and private banking divisions compete fiercely to acquire.
Worth noting in the same breath: SoFi appeared in over 1% of our wires - a small but meaningful share for a platform that only recently launched banking products. SoFi has explicitly targeted the high-earning professional demographic, and its presence here suggests it is beginning to gain traction as a primary banking relationship among this cohort. One to watch.
Beyond the major banks, the data reveals a healthy long tail of credit unions - Navy Federal, First Tech Federal, Digital Federal, Alliant, and dozens more. This isn't noise. It reflects a deliberate choice by a portion of the tech workforce to bank with institutions that offer better rates and fewer fees.
The notable absence: neobanks and fintechs
One finding stands out for what it doesn't show.
Despite the tech-forward profile of this cohort, neobanks are virtually absent from our data. Chime, Revolut, Mercury, and similar digital-native challengers do not appear as meaningful destinations for these wires. Neither does Robinhood, despite its strong penetration among retail investors and its push into banking products.
The interpretation is straightforward: when it comes to the account that actually holds meaningful money - the one used for a five or six-figure wire - this cohort defaults to incumbents. Neobanks may have captured wallet share for day-to-day spending, but they have not become the primary financial home for pre-IPO wealth. Traditional banks still win at the moment that matters most.
The pre-IPO tech employee is, from a banking perspective, a customer in a chrysalis stage. Today they look like a moderately affluent professional with a checking account and some savings. Within 12 to 36 months - depending on IPO timelines - a meaningful share of them will experience liquidity events that transform their financial profile entirely.The bank that holds their checking account at the moment of exercise is powerfully positioned.
That moment - the transition from HENRY to HNWI - is the most valuable customer acquisition opportunity in retail banking. And based on our data, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are currently best positioned to capture it.
A word on methodology
This analysis is drawn from wire transfer metadata collected in the ordinary course of processing Equitybee funding transactions. All data is aggregated across transactions processed on the Equitybee platform between March 2020 and April 2026. No individual employee data, company names, option values, or personally identifying information is included or derivable from this analysis.The US market deposit share figures are sourced from the FDIC Summary of Deposits as of June 30, 2024 - the most recently available annual survey. Because the Equitybee dataset spans March 2020 to April 2026 while the FDIC figure is a point-in-time snapshot, comparisons between them are directional and illustrative only. Institutional M&A activity during the relevant period - most notably JPMorgan Chase's acquisition of First Republic Bank in May 2023 - may also affect how individual institution figures should be interpreted.
Equitybee is a platform connecting tech employees with accredited investors to fund stock option exercises in pre-IPO companies. This post is informational and does not constitute financial or investment advice. All Equitybee figures are derived from internal platform data covering transactions processed between March 2020 and April 2026. US deposit share figures are sourced from the FDIC Summary of Deposits (June 30, 2024) and are publicly available at fdic.gov. Comparisons between Equitybee platform data and FDIC data are intended to be illustrative and directional; the two datasets do not cover identical time periods and should not be treated as a precise apples-to-apples comparison.