Citigroup is making tokenized interests in private companies available to wealth-management and institutional clients on SIX Digital Exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has already completed its first transaction and is in talks with additional private firms.
Citigroup is rolling out tokenized shares of private companies for its wealth-management and institutional clients, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The bank is already in discussions with private firms about joining the platform and hopes the model becomes an industry standard.
The platform runs on blockchain infrastructure provided by SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the Swiss regulated digital-asset subsidiary of SIX Group. It has already completed its first investment transaction, involving digital asset firm Kaleido. Eligible clients will be able to hold tokenized private-company interests alongside traditional securities in a single account, per the WSJ report. Citi says the arrangement offers greater transparency than special-purpose investment vehicles.
Citi and SDX Announced the Partnership a Year Ago
The rollout builds on a partnership announced a year earlier. Citi and SDX disclosed their collaboration in May 2025 at the Point Zero Forum in Switzerland, targeting a Q3 2025 launch. Under that agreement, Citi acts as custodian and tokenization agent on SDX’s digital Central Securities Depositary (CSD) platform, bringing late-stage, pre-IPO equities to institutional and eligible investors.
Ryan Marsh, Head of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Citi’s Investor Services and Issuer Services division, said in the 2025 announcement: “As a digital custodian and tokenization agent on the SDX platform, Citi will support its global investor and issuer clients with end-to-end servicing of tokenized assets. As tokenization scales, we are meeting client demand for access to emerging and relevant digital asset ecosystems and investments.”
Marni McManus, Citi Country Officer and Head of Banking for Switzerland, Monaco and Liechtenstein, said at the time: “Private markets is a major and growing opportunity and our work with SDX promises to simplify and digitize what is essentially a manual and paper-driven industry today.”
The 2025 announcement also named distribution partners: Sygnum, the global digital asset banking group, would facilitate access for European investors, while SBI Digital Markets would handle access in Asia.
Extending Citi’s Tokenization Stack Into Equity
The private-share offering adds a third tier to Citi’s tokenization architecture. The bank is already running Citi Token Services for cross-border instant payments. It also joined JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and more than a dozen peers on a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting a first-half 2027 launch.
The private-equity tier sits above those payment and settlement layers. It targets high-net-worth and institutional clients seeking exposure to late-stage, venture-backed companies ahead of public listings. Investor appetite for pre-IPO access has grown alongside expectations of major technology company listings on public markets.
Joining an Emerging Market
KKR and Hamilton Lane began moving this way years earlier. KKR partnered with Securitize to tokenize an interest in its $4 billion KKR Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II, with a minimum ticket size of $100,000 and secondary trading available after a one-year lock-up. Hamilton Lane made three of its funds accessible as tokenized feeder funds through Securitize, covering private equity, private credit, and secondary transactions.
Citi’s approach differs from both. It provides the infrastructure layer as custodian and tokenization agent for shares in individual private companies, rather than packaging its own fund as a tokenized product.
In a June 2026 research reportCiti projected the global tokenized securities market will reach $5.5 trillion by 2030. The bank identified the issuance of tokenized securities as a “key near-term opportunity” for incumbents, expecting established institutions to provide issuance platforms, custody, advisory services, and broker-dealer functions within tokenized ecosystems. The report also projected a hybrid environment where traditional systems and blockchain infrastructure coexist for an extended transition period.
What Is Not Yet Disclosed
The WSJ report and prior Citi announcements do not name the private companies currently in talks with the bank, the fee structure for the product, or the minimum investment threshold for eligible clients. The geographic scope from the 2025 press release focused on non-US institutional and eligible investors.
For coverage of Citi’s broader tokenization strategy, see Citi Projects $5.5T Tokenized Securities Market by 2030 and Major US Banks Including JPMorgan, Citi and BofA Plan Shared Tokenized Deposit Network.