Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market platform, announced a partnership with Nasdaq Private Market (NPM) to create a new type of trading based on the performance of private companies. This partnership (through an exclusive data-sharing agreement) will enable Polymarket to provide event contracts for specific events related to these private companies, including their valuations, the timing of their initial public offerings (IPOs), the level of secondary market trading activity, and other verifiable outcomes.
What the Nasdaq-Polymarket partnership does
Nasdaq Private Market will be the primary supplier of resolution data for Polymarket’s private company markets (in conjunction with Polymarket’s other private marketplace data providers). This means that every contract will be settled based upon credible, institutional-grade resolution data rather than just expectation or speculation from external sources.
Before this agreement, Polymarket only offered limited private company contracts (such as OpenAI’s first-day IPO valuation), but those relied on public information. The new partnership allows for expanding the number of private company contracts offered to include companies that might never go public, and where resolution will be based only upon the transaction data from NPM.
Key aspects of the new prediction markets
- Grants access to an exclusive asset class: With nearly 1,600 unicorn startups holding a combined value of more than $5 trillion, the vast majority of retail capital has been excluded from participating in private companies like OpenAI or SpaceX
- Resolution powered by Nasdaq data: Each of the prediction markets resolves using institutional-grade Nasdaq data encompassing both the primary and secondary market activity. This guarantees accurate resolution while building trust between users and the platform.
- Multi-outcome Contracts: Users can trade against the following outcomes: valuation (price) at time of IPO, price when secondary market opens up, prices at which stock will trade, and the timing of a company’s milestones.
- Real-time institutional signal: The markets also serve as a price discovery mechanism for institutional investors, complementing NPM’s transaction-based pricing data
- First markets already live: Markets are currently offering predictions for some of the largest private companies around the globe, including artificial intelligence (AI), fintech, and crypto companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Kraken.
What this means for the industry
This collaboration illustrates how well the two parties can create a link between legacy financial systems and decentralized prediction markets. For individual investors, this gives them another opportunity to participate in pre-IPO value creation events that previously would have only been available to institutional investors (venture capitalists, etc.). For institutions, Polymarket’s aggregated probability estimates provide an up-to-date sentiment signal on private company performance, an emerging source of market intelligence.
Community reaction
The announcement has generated enthusiasm within the crypto and retail trading communities. Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan stated that “prediction markets are one of the most powerful tools we have for democratizing access to financial information and opportunity,” adding that the launch brings that power “to one of the last frontiers of financial markets that retail participants have never been able to access.”
Tom Callahan, CEO of Nasdaq Private Market, noted that “Polymarket has built the platform that can open access to a broader audience,” adding that the partnership ensures every market resolves with high-integrity data.