Ondo Finance has launched Ondo Private Markets, a new product that gives eligible investors tokenized exposure to the economic performance of private companies before they go public. The firs
Ondo Finance has launched Ondo Private Markets, a new product that gives eligible investors tokenized exposure to the economic performance of private companies before they go public.
The first market, referencing a pre-IPO AI company, is expected to begin secondary trading this week, with exposure to companies across robotics, cybersecurity, biotech and infrastructure planned to follow.
Private companies are businesses that have not yet listed their shares on a public stock exchange, meaning ordinary investors typically cannot buy or sell ownership stakes in them.
These companies are often in their fastest-growth phase, but by the time they reach an IPO, a significant portion of their value creation may already be behind them.
Related: Some Californians under 23 will get $900 a month, no questions asked
The scale of what's been locked away from most investors is striking. Roughly 87% of U.S. companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue are privately held, according to Apollo Academy.
And over the 20 years ending December 2025, U.S. private equity funds delivered annualized returns of 13.2%, net of fees, compared with 11.3% for the S&P 500, according to Cambridge Associates.
Each Ondo Private Markets token is a tokenized note whose payout is linked to the per-share value of the referenced company's common stock at a qualifying liquidity event, typically an IPO, acquisition or secondary sale.
Eligible investors can buy, hold and trade these notes 24/7 on secondary markets, or store them in self-custody wallets.
The product addresses two longstanding problems in private markets. The first is access: high minimum investments have traditionally locked out all but the largest institutional players.
The second is liquidity: even investors who get in often have no practical way to get out before an IPO, which can be years away. Ondo Private Markets aims to solve both by making each exposure a tradeable token from day one.
Ondo Private Markets runs on the same institutional-grade infrastructure behind the company's existing products.
Ondo currently leads all providers in tokenized U.S. Treasuries with approximately $2.9 billion on rwa.xyz, holds $3.9 billion in total value locked across its platform, and lists over 450 tokenized stocks and ETFs through Ondo Stocks, which recently surpassed $1 billion in TVL on its own.
The company's institutional partners include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan's Kinexys and DTCC's Fund/SERV. The launch follows a rapid sequence of product expansions.
In September alone, Ondo launched tokenized investment portfolios powered by BlackRock, added spot trading on Ondo Perps, became the first tokenization company to join DTCC's Fund/SERV, and signed an MOU to explore distribution in Australia.
Private markets is the next layer, extending the same tokenization approach from public equities and Treasuries into the companies that haven't listed yet.
Related: Analyst picks three stocks he says deserve a bump on Roundtable 100
