By partnering with Republic, MSX aims to make SpaceX shareholders accessible to the general public.

Have you ever thought about becoming a shareholder of SpaceX before it lands on the moon, or ByteDance before it goes public?

In traditional financial terms, this kind of opportunity is called "Pre-IPO" private equity investment. It usually happens in the last mile before the formal IPO of unicorns such as SpaceX and ByteDance. At this time, the business model is extremely mature, and the risk is far less than that of early venture capital. However, after acquiring shares, the return rate after the company goes public is still amazing - at least double, and sometimes several times or even dozens of times.

However, for a long time, this lucrative pie has been exclusively enjoyed by private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC), while ordinary retail investors have been kept outside the highly closed walls, mostly waiting for companies to go public before buying in on the secondary market. In short, the opportunity of "pre-IPO" has long not belonged to most people.

Now, MSX has decided to overcome this barrier by combining tokenization with a Wall Street compliance platform.

I. The trillion-dollar cake behind the walls: visible but untouchable

Data shows that the size of the "Pre-IPO" market has far exceeded expectations.

According to the "2025 Global Unicorn 500 Report", the total valuation of the 2025 Global Unicorn 500 companies reached 39.14 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.71%, far exceeding the GDP of Germany, the world's third largest economy. The average valuation also rose from 59.883 billion yuan to 78.276 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.71%.

In his article "Why Private Equity Wins: Reflecting on a Quarter-Century of Outperformance," Dawson Managing Partner Yann Robard also points out that the value created by the private equity market over the past 25 years is about three times that of the stock market during the same period. In other words, the stage that truly generates excess returns often occurs before the IPO.

Taking SpaceX, currently the world's number one unicorn, as an example, MSX's exclusive analysis found that its primary market valuation was only $180 billion in 2024, and then it climbed steeply. By the beginning of 2026, after completing the share swap integration with xAI, its non-public valuation had reached $1.25 trillion, a six-fold increase in just two years .

The price of private equity transfers of SpaceX in the non-public market also surged from about $56 per share in October 2021 to about $527 per share in February 2026, almost nine times in four years .

It's fair to say that equity in unlisted unicorn companies has always been a super alpha in global asset allocation, a fact everyone is well aware of. However, in this trillion-dollar sector with rapidly growing valuations, the entry rules are extremely unequal:

● The minimum investment threshold is often "millions" : The entry fee of hundreds of thousands or even millions of US dollars directly deters 99.9% of individual investors;

● Opportunity cost of liquidity : Once invested, funds are often locked up for up to 5-10 years, making it difficult to realize cash.

● Extremely unfair allocation : For "hot commodities" like OpenAI, SpaceX, and ByteDance, which are extremely sought after by buyers, the quotas are always only circulated within a small circle of top PE and VC firms;

In other words, this is a trillion-dollar market with potential for high returns, but it has long been open only to institutional investors and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

This is why the market paid close attention when Robinhood, the online brokerage giant, offered European users trading "stock tokens" of OpenAI and SpaceX in June 2025, and it was seen as the first large-scale trial of tokenization of private assets by a traditional online brokerage.

Because it sends an important signal: by using RWA tokenization to dismantle the barriers of the primary market and map real equity into on-chain divisible tokens, the limitations of entry barriers, liquidity restrictions, and exit efficiency may be redefined.

II. How can MSX, in partnership with Republic, break down the "Pre-IPO" barrier?

Today, Maiton MSX officially took over the baton of "investment equality".

We have entered into a strategic partnership with Republic, a US-compliant asset tokenization platform, and will soon launch a Pre-IPO zone to provide eligible platform users with private equity tokenization services for top global unicorns such as SpaceX and ByteDance. The initial quota exceeds ten million US dollars and covers more than 10 top global unicorns. Details such as the specific list of targets and the amount released will be announced when the platform is officially launched.

However, when faced with this kind of "pre-IPO" equity on-chaining, your first reaction might be: Is it safe? Is it legal? Or is it just a "virtual mapping"?

Here, we need to provide some background information on Republic's projects. As a compliant private securities platform operating under the supervision of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Republic has long provided global investors with access to private equity financing channels. It is committed to helping individual and institutional investors participate in private markets and alternative assets that were previously only open to a small number of professional investors. Its private assets are held through regulated third-party custodians (such as licensed institutions like BitGo Trust Company).

It's worth mentioning that Republic is also the core service provider behind Robinhood's launch of unlisted unicorn stock token projects in Europe.

Source: Republic

This means that MSX's Pre-IPO Zone is a structural innovation built on a mature compliance framework, and you will enjoy services at the same level as the world's top brokerage firms: all unicorn equity assets are connected through a compliance channel equivalent to Robinhood, the existing shares behind the mapped tokens are real, and they are held in custody by a regulated third party, with a legal and asset support foundation .

Ultimately, when tokenization technology meets compliant private equity platforms under the supervision of the US SEC, the equity of unlisted giants will no longer be the exclusive domain of top venture capitalists.

Third, what does this mean for ordinary users?

We firmly believe that the Pre-IPO product launched this time will bring structural changes to ordinary users in three dimensions.

First, the entry threshold has been "equalized," bidding farewell to entry tickets that often cost millions of dollars.

As mentioned above, the starting price in the traditional private equity market is usually hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, while tokenization can fragment the originally unattainable unicorn stocks, allowing ordinary users on the Maitong MSX platform who meet the requirements to sit at the same table with top venture capitalists and share equally in the future growth premium of SpaceX or ByteDance in the primary and secondary markets with very low thresholds.

Secondly, it is about "source-based" valuation advantages, avoiding the emotional tax of the secondary market.

It's well known that the surge in prices on the first day or in the early stages of an IPO is often accompanied by a huge emotional bubble, and ordinary retail investors often enter the market when prices are already high. Participating in the pre-IPO stage means you're capturing the closest possible valuation range. In short, you can finally position yourself before the company goes public at a low valuation, instead of becoming a bagholder during the post-IPO frenzy.

Finally, there is the "restructuring" of the liquidity structure, breaking the imagination space of N-year lock-up.

The most troublesome aspect of traditional private equity investment is the long exit lock-up period of 5-10 years. To address this pain point, MSX plans to be the first to launch high-quality pre-IPO targets with short-term redemption mechanisms, and will continue to explore more technical paths to improve asset liquidity in the future, which is expected to completely reconstruct the exit logic of the primary market.

In conclusion

The launch of the "Pre-IPO" zone also marks the expansion of MSX's US stock tokenization strategy from "secondary market asset trading" to "primary market share distribution".

With the global trend of asset tokenization, pre-IPO tokenization has become a key focus of industry discussion for the next stage. As one of the earliest trading platforms to deeply cultivate US stock tokenization, MSX has consistently focused on one thing, from breaking down barriers to US stock trading to dismantling the walls of private equity:

This allows ordinary people to have the opportunity to share in the growth dividends of the most scarce high-quality assets in this era.

Just as five years ago, ordinary people couldn't imagine that they could instantly buy and sell US stocks through an on-chain wallet; before today, you probably also found it hard to imagine that you could become a "shareholder" of SpaceX or ByteDance with extremely low barriers to entry.

In 2026, we hope to work with everyone to slowly push open that once tightly closed iron gate.