Partnering with Republic, MSX Aims to Enable the General Public to Become SpaceX Shareholders

Have you ever thought about becoming a shareholder in SpaceX before it lands on the moon, or in ByteDance before it rings the bell for its IPO?

In the context of traditional finance, such opportunities are known as "Pre-IPO" private equity investments. They typically occur in the final stretch before unicorns like SpaceX and ByteDance officially go public. At this stage, the business model is already highly mature, and the risk is far lower than in early-stage venture capital. Yet, the potential return on investment after the company's IPO remains astonishing—ranging from doubling to several times or even dozens of times the initial investment.

However, for a long time, this lucrative pie has been exclusively enjoyed by private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms. Ordinary retail investors have been kept outside the highly closed-off walls, waiting to buy shares in the secondary market after the company lists. Ultimately, the "Pre-IPO" opportunity has long been inaccessible to the majority.

Now, Maitong MSX has decided to scale this high wall through a combination of tokenization and a Wall Street-compliant platform.

1. The Trillion-Dollar Cake Inside the Walls: Visible, Yet Out of Reach

Data shows that the scale of the "Pre-IPO" market has long exceeded imagination.

The "2025 Global Unicorn 500 Report" indicates that the total valuation of the 2025 Global Unicorn 500 reached 39.14 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.71%. This scale far exceeds the GDP of Germany, the world's third-largest economy. The average valuation also rose from 598.83 billion yuan to 782.76 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.71%.

Yann Robard, Managing Partner at Dawson, also pointed out in the article "Why Private Equity Wins: Reflecting on a Quarter-Century of Outperformance" that over the past 25 years, the value created in the private market has been about three times that of the public stock market during the same period. In other words, the stage that truly creates excess returns often occurs before a company goes public.

Taking SpaceX, currently the world's top-ranked unicorn, as an example, exclusive research by Maitong MSX reveals that its primary market valuation was only $180 billion in 2024, followed by a steep climb. By early 2026, after completing the share swap integration with xAI, its non-public valuation had reached $1.25 trillion, a sixfold increase in just two years.

Furthermore, the private equity transfer price for SpaceX in the non-public market soared from about $56 per share in October 2021 to about $527 per share in February 2026, representing an almost ninefold increase in less than four and a half years.

It can be said that equity in unlisted unicorn companies has always been a super Alpha in global asset allocation. Everyone knows this, but within this trillion-dollar, rapidly appreciating sector, the barriers to entry remain high:

• High Capital Thresholds, Often "Starting at Millions": Entry fees often ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of US dollars directly deter 99.9% of individual investors.
• The "Opportunity Cost" of Liquidity: Once invested, capital is often locked up, sometimes for 5-10 years, making it difficult to liquidate.
• Extreme Inequity in Allocation: For highly sought-after "hot items" like OpenAI, SpaceX, and ByteDance, where buyer demand far exceeds supply, allocations always circulate only within the small circles of top-tier PE and VC firms.

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

This is also why, in June 2025, when the internet brokerage giant Robinhood offered European users the ability to trade "stock tokens" for OpenAI and SpaceX, the market paid close attention, viewing it as the first large-scale pilot by a traditional internet broker in tokenizing private assets.

Because it sent an important signal: using RWA tokenization to dismantle the walls of the primary market, mapping real equity into divisible on-chain tokens, could potentially redefine the limitations of entry barriers, liquidity constraints, and exit efficiency.

2. Partnering with Republic: How is MSX Breaking Down the "Pre-IPO" Wall?

Today, Maitong MSX has reached a strategic partnership with Republic, a US-compliant asset tokenization platform. They are about to launch a Pre-IPO zone, providing eligible platform users with tokenized private equity services for global top unicorns like SpaceX and ByteDance. The initial quota scale exceeds tens of millions of US dollars, covering over ten global top unicorns. Specific details regarding the list of assets and release quotas will be announced upon the official launch.

However, when faced with this concept of "Pre-IPO" equity being put on-chain, your first reaction might be to ask: Is it safe? Is it legal? Could it just be a "virtual representation"?

Here, it's necessary to first add some background on the Republic project. As a compliant private securities platform operating under the regulation of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Republic has long provided global investors with access to private equity financing. It is dedicated to helping individual and institutional investors participate in private markets and alternative assets that were previously typically accessible only 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 is worth noting that Republic is also the core service provider behind Robinhood's project in Europe to offer stock tokens for unlisted unicorns.

Source: Republic

This means that MSX's Pre-IPO zone is built upon a mature and compliant framework with structural innovation. Users will enjoy services on par with the world's top brokerages: All unicorn equity assets are connected through compliant channels equivalent to those used by Robinhood. The underlying shares represented by the tokens genuinely exist, are custodied by regulated third parties, and have a legal and asset-backed foundation.

Ultimately, when tokenization technology meets a compliant private placement platform under SEC regulation, equity in unlisted giants will no longer be the exclusive feast of top venture capitalists.

3. What Does This Mean for Ordinary Users?

The launch of this Pre-IPO product can bring about structural changes for ordinary users in three dimensions.

First, it's the "democratization" of entry barriers, saying goodbye to tickets that cost millions of dollars.

As mentioned above, the starting price in the traditional private market is typically hundreds of thousands or even millions of US dollars. Tokenization, however, can fractionalize the once-unattainable shares of unicorns. This allows eligible ordinary users on the Maitong MSX platform to sit at the same table as top VCs with an extremely low threshold, equally sharing in the growth premium of SpaceX or ByteDance across primary and secondary markets.

Second, it's the "source-level" valuation advantage, avoiding the "emotional tax" of the secondary market.

As is well known, the surge on the first day of an IPO or in its early stages is often accompanied by massive emotional bubbles. Ordinary retail investors often enter when prices are already at high levels. Participating at the Pre-IPO stage means you are capturing a valuation range closest to reality. In short, ordinary users can finally position themselves during the low-valuation stage before a company goes public, rather than acting as the last buyers during the post-IPO frenzy.

Finally, it's the "restructuring" of liquidity, breaking the imagination of N-year lock-ups.

The most frustrating aspect of traditional private equity investment is arguably the long exit lock-up period of 5-10 years. To address this pain point, Maitong MSX plans to be among the first to launch high-quality Pre-IPO assets with short-term redemption mechanisms. It will continue to explore more technical pathways to enhance asset liquidity in the future, potentially redefining the exit logic of the primary market.

In Conclusion

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

Amid the major trend of global asset tokenization, Pre-IPO tokenization has become a widely discussed next-phase focus in the industry. As one of the world's earliest trading platforms deeply committed to US stock tokenization, from breaking down barriers to US stock trading to now dismantling the walls of private equity, MSX has always been dedicated to one thing:

Enabling ordinary people to have the opportunity to share in the growth dividends of this era's most scarce, high-quality assets.

Just as five years ago, ordinary people couldn't imagine instantly buying and selling US stocks through an on-chain wallet; before today, you might have found it equally hard to imagine becoming a "shareholder" in SpaceX or ByteDance with an extremely low barrier to entry.