Citigroup, the third largest bank in the United States, today, June 11, 2026, unveiled a platform based on a permissioned network to allow the trading of tokenized shares of private companies prior to their IPO.
This new digital infrastructure initially benefits foreign institutional investors (not available to Americans) and high net worth clients.
The system streamlines stock trading tokenized through a maintenance and transaction commission schemeas reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The initiative arises as a direct response to the prolonged delays that companies face in debuting on the traditional Wall Street stock exchange. As a result of this situation, large companies such as SpaceX and Anthropic remain under private financing for longer before going public. This trend limits the portfolio available to large equity fund managers.
To solve this problem, the system architecture issues tokenized deposit receipts that split ownership of the securities in the bank’s custody. The private network that supports these financial operations operates under the management of the provider SIX, based in Switzerland.
Linked to this advance, Artem Korenyuk, Citi’s global head of digital asset business alignment, explained that the mechanism allows you to place these investments practically “next to your Apple shares”.
The firm executed the first real deal with the tokenization of Kaleido, a digital asset management and tokenization company backed by Citi.
In order to expand the initiative, the banking institution is holding talks with global firms to integrate its technology with other cryptocurrency networks. The bank projects that other financial entities will adopt the same platform to standardize private equity trading.
Citi gives a positive projection to the tokenization of assets
In line with this vision of tokenization, Citigroup’s own research center projects a massive expansion for the sector. Its analysts point out that, although private markets change slowly, the global growth of tokenization will be strongly concentrated in traditional public channels, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
The bank’s study details that the total volume of tokenized assets will scale from 17 billion dollars to an average volume of 5.5 trillion of dollars before the close of the decade. This advance would be massively concentrated in conventional liquid assets such as US stocks and government bonds, they say.
Ultimately, the implementation of this corporate digital channel transforms the way individual investors and global funds manage their venture capital financial portfolios. The system removes operational barriers to liquidating stakes in advanced technology companies.