Polymarket announced on May 19, 2026 that it has signed an exclusive partnership with Nasdaq Private Market (NPM) to use NPM's transaction and valuation data as the official resolution source for a new category of event contracts covering privately held companies.
The contracts let users trade on outcomes such as whether a given startup reaches a valuation milestone, completes an IPO, or sees secondary-market activity — without holding equity or meeting accredited-investor requirements. Initial targets include some of the most closely watched names in private markets. "For the first time, anyone can engage with the outcomes driving value at the world's most consequential private companies," Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said in the announcement.
The structural detail that separates this from prior Polymarket private-company markets is the data source. Polymarket previously ran contracts on companies like OpenAI and SpaceX, but those resolved against publicly available news sources. Under the new arrangement, NPM — which operates secondary-market infrastructure for private company equity and was spun out from Nasdaq Inc. in 2021 — supplies the primary transaction and valuation data directly. That data has historically been available only to institutional and accredited-investor subscribers; the partnership makes it publicly accessible for the first time.
The joint announcement frames the arrangement as a price-discovery tool. By routing live NPM data through Polymarket's on-chain contract infrastructure, both firms say the markets can produce real-time valuation signals for startups that have no public ticker.
The move also marks a category shift for Polymarket. The platform built its audience on political and sports event contracts. Adding structured, data-resolved financial instruments — with a dedicated institutional data partner rather than a basket of press sources — puts it closer to financial product territory than event betting.
The distinction matters when compared to the competitive field. Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market, already offers IPO event contracts on companies including Kraken, but its resolution rules cite a basket of major news outlets: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BBC, and others. Polymarket's NPM tie-up bypasses that approach entirely by going to the data at the source.
Nasdaq Private Market describes itself as a provider of liquidity and investment infrastructure for the private market. The $5 trillion figure attached to the private-company asset class in Polymarket's framing refers to the aggregate estimated value of late-stage private companies globally, a segment that has remained structurally inaccessible to retail participants outside of secondary-market platforms that require verification and account minimums.
Source: Polymarket / Nasdaq Private Market joint press release via BusinessWire, May 19, 2026. Kalshi resolution rules: kalshi.com/markets/kxipo/ipos/kxipo-26.