Author: 137Labs
When Maitong MSX announced its partnership with Republic to launch a tokenized private equity专区 for retail investors ahead of an IPO, a domain long reserved for top-tier institutions is being reopened.
In the past, ordinary investors could only buy shares after a company went public through the secondary market; today, by combining tokenization technology with compliant channels, some are beginning to position themselves before a company’s official IPO. Whether it’s SpaceX, the world’s most valuable private company, or AI giant OpenAI, both have become core targets in this trend.
This is not just a platform partnership announcement, but also a significant signal of the accelerated evolution of the Pre-IPO landscape.
I. Pre-IPO: The Stage That Truly Generates Excess Returns
In traditional finance, Pre-IPO refers to the final rounds of funding before a company goes public. At this stage, the company has typically validated its product and refined its business model, making the risk significantly lower than in early-stage venture capital, but its valuation has not yet been fully reassessed by public markets.
Over the past 25 years, the private market has generated significantly more value than the public equity market during the same period, meaning that much of the growth upside has already been realized before companies go public. By the time businesses enter the secondary market, early investors have often already captured the most explosive returns.
Taking SpaceX as an example, its private valuation skyrocketed exponentially within just a few years; similar trends are evident among leading companies in AI, fintech, and the crypto industry. The pre-IPO stage is often when valuation surges occur most rapidly.
The issue is that this stage has long been tightly controlled by PE, VC, and family offices.
Two, a trillion-dollar market that is highly closed
The total valuation of global unicorn companies has reached trillions of RMB, yet ordinary investors have almost no access to this market.
Traditional pre-IPO investing faces three high barriers:
1.Extremely high capital requirements
Entry amounts often reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, excluding the vast majority of retail investors under the "qualified investor" standard.
2.Extremely low liquidity
Funds are typically locked up for many years, and exits depend on IPOs or acquisitions, with no effective secondary market available during this period.
3.Information and allocation asymmetry
High-quality shares of popular targets like SpaceX, OpenAI, and ByteDance are almost exclusively traded among a select few top-tier institutions.
Even though the U.S. has secondary private equity transfer platforms such as Forge and EquityZen, they are essentially peer-to-peer matching systems with low transaction efficiency and opaque pricing mechanisms.
In other words, this is a large-scale market with substantial potential returns, but with highly uneven access rules.
III. Traditional Brokerages Dip Their Toes: Robinhood’s Signal
In June 2025, leading online brokerage Robinhood launched tokenized shares of unlisted unicorns, including OpenAI and SpaceX, in the European market.
This action sparked significant controversy. OpenAI quickly clarified that the related token does not represent company equity; subsequently, Elon Musk made playful comments on social media, further increasing the event's热度.
The controversy reflects two realities:
There is genuine market demand for on-chain Pre-IPO assets.
Private companies are highly sensitive to "pricing power spillover."
Regardless of stance, this attempt has sent a clear signal — the tokenization of primary market assets has begun to enter the mainstream financial spotlight.
Four: Three Paths for On-Chain Pre-IPO
As regulatory attitudes gradually ease and technological infrastructure matures, three typical models of on-chain Pre-IPO have emerged.
1.Derivatives Model: Trading Valuation, Not Actual Equity
Some projects do not hold actual stocks but allow users to bet on valuation changes of private companies through perpetual or index contracts.
For example, platforms on Solana and other high-performance blockchains allow users to go long or short an "OpenAI valuation index." This approach has low entry barriers and flexible liquidity design, but the issue is:
Pricing relies on oracles
Private companies have infrequent valuation updates.
· Regulatory status exists in a gray area
Its nature is closer to a prediction market than an equity investment.
2. 1:1 Real Equity Tokenization (SPV Model)
This model establishes a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to hold actual shares and issues on-chain tokens proportionally.
Representative platforms include PreStocks associated with Republic and Jarsy, developed by a U.S. team. Their core logic is:
· Raise funds first
Negotiate with existing shareholders to acquire shares
Mint an equal amount of tokens based on actual holdings
The advantage of this approach is that assets are backed by physical collateral, giving investors economic rights; the disadvantage is slower expansion, strong reliance on offline resources, and higher compliance pressure.
3.Company-initiated on-chain listing (issuer model)
Another more disruptive path is for enterprises themselves to become issuing entities.
Superstate's Opening Bell platform seeks to enable companies to issue legally valid stock tokens directly on-chain, alongside maintaining an on-chain shareholder register.
This means that in the future, certain companies may even bypass traditional IPO processes and achieve quasi-public trading on-chain.
If regulators ultimately recognize this model, the structure of capital markets could be redefined.
Five: MSX × Republic: Structural Innovation Within a Compliance Framework
Returning to the collaboration between MSX and Republic.
Republic is a private securities platform operating under the SEC regulatory framework, with a compliant issuance and custody system, where underlying assets are held by regulated institutions. Through its partnership with Republic, MSX will:
·Compliant private equity
·SPV equity structure
On-chain tokenized issuance
·Trading platform circulation mechanism
Put them together.
This means MSX's Pre-IPO section is not a "virtual mapping," but rather a structural innovation built upon the existing regulatory framework.
For ordinary investors, the changes are primarily reflected in three aspects:
▻Lowered barriers
No longer a million-dollar ticket in.
▻Valuation Prioritization
Avoid paying an emotional premium during IPO mania.
▻Liquidity Exploration
Attempt to improve the long-term lock-up challenges of traditional private placements through on-chain mechanisms.
Six: Real-world challenges still exist
Despite the promising prospects, on-chain Pre-IPO still faces three core challenges:
1. The regulatory boundaries have not yet been fully defined
2. Private companies have complex attitudes toward tokenization
3. Liquidity depth and pricing efficiency still need to be validated
In particular, the actual equity ownership model depends on the ability to integrate offline resources, while the derivatives model must address information lag and manipulation risks.
Pre-IPO on-chain is not merely a technical issue, but the result of complex interactions among financial structures, regulatory frameworks, and corporate governance.
Seven: Democratization of Investment, or a New Round of Risk Transfer?
Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly becoming the main investment force, preferring to actively allocate assets with high growth potential rather than relying solely on pension systems. Unlisted tech giants naturally attract this generation.
The emergence of on-chain Pre-IPOs has, to some extent, narrowed the opportunity gap between retail and institutional investors.
But it is also essential to be clear-headed:
·Limited disclosure for unlisted companies
· Valuation may significantly deviate from actual business performance
Low liquidity can amplify volatility.
Pre-IPO has never been a low-risk investment, but rather one with a different risk structure.
Conclusion: The walls are beginning to crack
From Robinhood’s initial foray, to Republic’s structured compliant offerings, to MSX incorporating pre-IPO assets into its tokenized ecosystem, this space is rapidly maturing.
The once impenetrable wall of the primary market is beginning to crack.
In the future capital market, the strict distinction between “pre-IPO” and “post-IPO” may no longer exist, with continuous liquidity enabled through on-chain asset formats.
When retail investors can participate in the growth of top global unlisted companies through their wallets, what we see is not just the launch of a new product, but a restructuring of capital structure.
The pre-IPO era may have just begun.