Ondo opens the door to private companies, starting with AI

Ondo Finance is opening a door that has mostly stayed shut. On October 5 the company introduced Ondo Private Markets, a tokenized note tied to the performance of a private company, and said the first one references a pre-IPO artificial-intelligence firm. Secondary trading was expected to start this week, around the clock. Eligible investors outside the United States, in places where the product is allowed, are the buyers, Unchained reported. The company behind the note has not been named yet. The chance to trade the exposure has.

The note is built to track value, and Ondo is plain about the shape of it. Holders do not receive ordinary shares, votes, or dividends. The payout is linked to the per-share value of the company's common stock at a qualifying liquidity event: an initial public offering, a sale, or a bankruptcy-related outcome. That is how a private company, which does not have a ticker, can still have a token. People can enter and leave the position before the company ever lists. The listing, if it comes, is when the note settles to the number it was written on.

Ian De Bode, Ondo's acting chief executive, put the size of the gap in the announcement. Most companies with more than $100 million in revenue are private, he said, and retail investors mostly cannot reach them. The first name is an AI company. Robotics, cybersecurity, biotech, and infrastructure are the sectors Ondo says will follow. One asset first, then a shelf. That is the same path Ondo already walked with public stocks, and the shelf there is no longer a sketch.

The platform under the new market is already large. A social summary put the figure at $3.7 billion across tokenized stocks and Treasuries. As of September 29, TokenPost counted $3.711 billion of on-chain assets and $2.954 billion of active assets, a book that includes Treasury products and equities. Ondo itself said on September 30 that Ondo Stocks had passed $1.26 billion across more than 450 stocks and ETFs. Private Markets is the next shelf on that stack, not a replacement for it. The stocks and the Treasuries keep trading. The new note is the addition.

What a reader can do with it is straightforward. Where the product is offered, an eligible buyer can hold a claim on a private company's outcome and trade that claim overnight, instead of waiting years for an IPO allocation they were never going to get. The company name is the detail still to come, and it will make the note easier to follow. The step Ondo took this week is the one that matters first. Private-company exposure now has a market this week, and the first seat on it is a pre-IPO artificial-intelligence company.

The follow-up writes itself. When Ondo names the AI company, that is a story. When the second sector opens, robotics or biotech or the next one on the list, that is a story too. For now the good news is the door. A firm that already runs a large tokenized stock and Treasury business has started offering private-company exposure, around the clock, to eligible investors outside the United States. That is a bigger shelf than the industry had on Monday, and a cleaner way in than waiting on a pitch deck that never arrives.