Ondo opens tokenized access to pre-IPO AI companies

Ondo Finance has launched Ondo Private Markets, a platform for tokenized private-company exposure starting with pre-IPO artificial-intelligence companies, according to The Block. The first notes will track an AI company’s per-share value at qualifying liquidity events, giving investors a way to hold an onchain instrument tied to a private-market valuation.

The notes are freely transferable and composable onchain. The first market is expected to launch this week with permissionless, 24/7 trading on secondary markets, The Block reported.

That changes the access mechanics for crypto-native investors. A private-company position that would normally be difficult to transfer will be represented by a tokenized note that can move between wallets and be used within onchain systems. The underlying exposure remains tied to a pre-IPO company, however, and the note only tracks per-share value when a qualifying liquidity event occurs.

The legal exposure is narrower than equity ownership. The notes are obligations of the issuer, according to The Block, and do not give holders ownership or shareholder rights in the underlying companies. Investors therefore receive exposure to the issuer’s obligation to reflect the relevant value, rather than direct claims on the company’s shares or governance.

The first company has not been named in the available announcement. The specific eligibility requirements for investors and the events that qualify for a payout also remain open details.

Access is restricted to eligible non-U.S. investors in permitted jurisdictions. That limitation matters for positions: the product’s 24/7 secondary-market design does not make it broadly available to U.S. retail investors, and the fact sheet does not provide the fees associated with holding or trading the notes.

Ondo’s own expansion puts the launch beside its existing tokenized-market products. The Block reported that Ondo’s tokenized stocks and Treasurys platforms have $3.7 billion in total value locked and more than 1 million cumulative holders. Cointelegraph separately reported that Ondo Stocks, the company’s platform for tokenized U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds, has more than $1 billion in TVL and offers more than 450 tokenized stocks and ETFs. The company’s private-market push therefore adds a new asset category to an existing distribution system.

The arithmetic gives the broader market context. The Block put tokenized equities at more than $42 billion in market capitalization and the total tokenized-asset market at $121 billion. Dividing $42 billion by $121 billion produces roughly 34.7%, meaning tokenized equities account for about a third of the reported market by capitalization. Those figures come from The Block’s reporting; they are not a valuation of Ondo Private Markets.

Ian De Bode, Ondo Finance’s acting CEO and president, framed the product around the gap between public-market access and private-company supply. “In the US, the majority of the investment options accessible for retail are public companies, yet 87% of companies with over $100m in revenue are private. Ondo Private Markets is built to change that,” he told The Block.

The launch also extends Ondo’s recent geographic and product expansion. The Block reported in July that Ondo Finance partnered with Japan’s SBI Holdings to tokenize Japanese equities through Ondo Global Markets, with SBI planning to distribute Ondo products and use its JPYSC stablecoin for settlement and collateral.

Future private-market offerings are expected to include robotics, cybersecurity, biotech and infrastructure companies, The Block reported. For now, the mechanism begins with AI notes: transferable onchain obligations whose value is tied to a private company’s per-share price at specified liquidity events, available only to a defined non-U.S. investor base.