Citigroup partners with Swiss SDX to target the $75 billion Pre-IPO market, promoting the tokenization of "unlisted equity".

Citi Group (Citi) announced a partnership with the digital asset trading platform of the Swiss Exchange, (SIX Digital Exchange, SDX) on May 6th to tokenize Pre-IPO assets, targeting the unlisted equity market valued at 75 billion USD. This project is expected to officially launch in the third quarter of 2025, with Citi Group serving as the custodian and issuance agent, responsible for the safe custody and process coordination of the tokenized assets.

Why go on-chain? Because the pre-IPO process is outdated and cumbersome.

The process of buying shares in a private company is usually as follows:

a pile of PDF

handwritten document

Lawyer Review

The process takes 5 to 8 weeks to settle.

After investing, you cannot see it directly in the wealth management account; it can only exist in paper contracts or other independent platforms.

The image shows the cooperation statement between Citigroup and Swiss SDX. Citigroup provides custody and issuance, while SDX offers blockchain infrastructure.

The digital asset division SDX of the Swiss Stock Exchange has been operating as a regulated “blockchain securities registration platform” (CSD) since 2021:

SDX is built on the Corda distributed ledger technology of the International Financial Technology Alliance R3.

Through Switzerland’s “No Physical Securities Regulations”

Allow users to see these new investment products directly in their bank accounts, just like buying regular stocks.

The role of Citigroup is to become the asset custodian and issuer of SDX.

This is a global layout, starting with Switzerland, Singapore, and the Asian market.

Citigroup stated that this platform is not open to US investors, but qualified institutional investors and high net worth individual clients from other regions can participate.

The initial key markets include:

Switzerland

Singapore

Other regions in Asia

Sygnum and SBI Digital Markets also assist.

Singapore’s financial institution SBI Digital Markets and digital asset bank Sygnum will also assist in this project, helping to introduce more on-chain pre-IPO private equity.

To enable the entire ecosystem to have complete connectivity from the asset side ( unlisted companies ) to the demand side ( investors ).

(Citibank uses Avalanche (AVAX) to test the tokenization of private equity funds)

This article discusses Citigroup partnering with Swiss SDX to target the $75 billion Pre-IPO market, promoting the tokenization of “unlisted equity” first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.