Citigroup is rolling out a blockchain-based marketplace that lets wealthy and institutional investors trade tokenized shares of private companies, marking a deeper move by one of Wall Street’s largest banks into tokenized finance, according to The Wall Street Journal. The platform will issue tokenized depositary receipts created by Citi that represent ownership interests in private firms, opening first to foreign investors with access for the US market planned at a later date.

Citi digital asset executive Artem Korenyuk told the Journal the structure lets investors hold private-company shares “right next to their Apple stock,” folding an asset class that has long sat outside mainstream brokerage into a familiar trading framework. Major banks have been moving steadily into tokenization to modernize traditional markets, and Citi’s marketplace extends that effort into private equity.

Citi Favors Receipts Over SPVs

Citi argues that routing private investments through tokenized depositary receipts gives investors more transparency than special-purpose vehicles, the structures that have become a common but opaque path into late-stage private equity. Private-company shares are usually hard to move, since transfers often require company approval, documentation, legal review, and settlement that runs slower than public markets.

Tokenization does not strip out those restrictions, though it can create a cleaner digital record of ownership and make controlled secondary trading easier to manage. The bank is already in talks with several large private companies about listing their shares on the platform, though it has not named any issuers.

Pre-IPO Demand Drives The Launch

Demand for pre-IPO exposure has climbed as large companies stay private for longer and delay public listings, widening the gap between investor appetite and market access. Employees and early backers also increasingly want liquidity before a company reaches the stock market. Private equity has outperformed the S&P 500 across 5, 10, 15, and 20-year horizons, according to PitchBook data summarized by the American Investment Council, sharpening the case for broader access.

Several fintech platforms, including Robinhood, have tested tokenized exposure to private firms such as OpenAI, though those products generally deliver indirect economic exposure rather than legal ownership of the underlying shares. OpenAI cautioned investors last year that such tokenized stocks do not represent equity in the company.

The launch extends a run of tokenization moves tied to Citi. FinanceFeeds reported that JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are planning a shared tokenized deposit network targeted for the first half of 2027. Citi has also projected that tokenized real-world assets could reach as much as $8.2 trillion by 2030, driven by market-infrastructure adoption, digital cash rails, and clearer US regulation. The push coincides with reports that the SEC is weighing an innovation exemption that would let tokenized stocks trade on crypto-native platforms outside traditional exchanges.