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Polymarket meets Nasdaq
Polymarket launched private-company milestone prediction markets tied to valuations, IPO timing and secondary-market activity, with Nasdaq Private Market serving as the exclusive resolution data provider for settlement.
“without equity ownership, shares or voting rights”
CNBC said the new contracts let traders take positions on whether a specific private-market event happens, “without equity ownership, shares or voting rights,” and described the markets as cash-settled outcome bets rather than private-share trading.
The CNBC report also said Polymarket currently lists a market on whether OpenAI will have a $1 trillion-plus IPO before 2027 and another tied to whether Anthropic reaches a valuation of at least $500 billion in 2026.
In the same rollout, Nasdaq Private Market’s data is used to determine whether these contracts pay out, and CNBC said the valuation data will be made publicly available for free, without a subscription.
WinBuzzer framed the launch as turning valuation and IPO bets into cash-settled contracts, with “Nasdaq Private Market is attached to the rollout as the contracts’ settlement-data partner.”
Unicorn scale, new access
Polymarket’s private-company push is aimed at a universe of “nearly 1,600 unicorns globally worth more than $5 trillion,” according to WinBuzzer, while CNBC said “more than 1600 are unicorns valued at a billion dollars or more, according to Nasdaq.”
CBS News said the new markets let customers buy and sell contracts based on private companies' valuation milestones, initial public offering plans and secondary market activity, with select markets available beginning on Tuesday.
CBS quoted Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan saying, “For the first time, anyone can engage with the outcomes driving value at the world's most consequential private companies,” and added that Rodolfo Sanchez said the trades would provide a “real-time signal” for investors.
The Block reported that early offerings focus on AI, fintech, and crypto unicorns including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks, and Kraken, and said Polymarket sees the markets as serving as a new real-time signal for institutional investors tracking sentiment and pricing trends.
WinBuzzer said the contracts work “more like a yes-or-no call on a business event than a claim on company ownership,” with prices between $0.01 and $0.99 reflecting crowd-sourced probabilities.
Settlement data and signals
The partnership’s core mechanism is settlement accuracy tied to Nasdaq Private Market’s transaction and pricing data, with CNBC saying these contracts resolve using data from Nasdaq Private Market and that it will make valuation data publicly available for free.
“We anchor every market with institutional-quality data on the underlying companies”
crypto.news quoted Rodolfo Sanchez describing the relationship as two-way, saying, “We anchor every market with institutional-quality data on the underlying companies,” and it said the activity in Polymarket markets becomes a real-time signal for institutional investors.
In CNBC’s description of the platform’s rationale, it said secondary-market prices, funding rounds and IPO timing are still fragmented compared with public equities, and that a liquid prediction market could become another signal for companies where fresh private-market data is hard to find.
The Block reported that Polymarket announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new category of prediction markets tied to private company milestones, including IPO timing, valuations, earnings, and secondary market activity, and said the offerings exclusively source resolution data from Nasdaq Private Market.
WinBuzzer added that the rollout is designed to widen access to private-company market signals once Polymarket had built the trading venue, while keeping Nasdaq Private Market focused on supplying reference data for settlement rather than listing equity.
