The biggest financial story of the last decade is not what is happening on Wall Street. It is what is happening just outside of it.The most valuable companies of this generation, the ones running cloud infrastructure, satellite internet, rocket launches and a sizable chunk of artificial intelligence research, have spent years deliberately staying private. They have raised tens of billions of dollars without ever filing an S-1.For most working Americans, that has been a closed loop. You can buy Tesla (TSLA) stock through your brokerage account today. You cannot buy SpaceX stock, no matter how much your retirement portfolio screams at you to.You can buy Microsoft (MSFT). You cannot directly buy a piece of OpenAI, even though Microsoft owns part of it. The richest companies in the most consequential industries have built a velvet rope, and most of us have been standing on the wrong side of it.That fence just got a small but real crack in it. On May 19, prediction markets platform Polymarket announced something that almost feels like an answer to that long-running complaint.
Polymarket is opening event contracts tied to private companies such as OpenAIMARTIN LELIEVRE / Getty Images
What Polymarket actually launchedPolymarket is opening event contracts tied to the performance and milestones of private companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, Databricks and Ripple.The platform is doing this through an exclusive deal with Nasdaq Private Market, a subsidiary of Nasdaq Inc. (NDAQ) that already runs secondary share trading and tender offers for late-stage startups. Nasdaq Private Market will serve as the resolution data provider, meaning it decides whether a contract pays out “yes” or “no.”More Wall Street:JPMorgan resets S&P 500 price target for the rest of 2026Vanguard challenges the S&P 500 as a one-stop strategyGoldman Sachs resets Broadcom stock forecastA user can already trade a contract on whether OpenAI surpasses a $1 trillion valuation by the end of 2026, reported Crypto Briefing citing the Financial Times. These are not stock purchases. They are binary bets, priced between zero and $1, that settle to fixed payouts based on outcome.”For the first time, anyone can engage with the outcomes driving value at the world’s most consequential private companies,” said Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan in the launch announcement, reported CBS News.The pitch lands at a number that is hard to ignore.Key figures behind the launch:About 1,600 unicorns globally now hold more than $5 trillion in combined value, according to Polymarket.Polymarket and rival Kalshi handled more than $24 billion in notional volume in April, per Dune Analytics data cited by CNBC.SpaceX is eyeing a public valuation as high as $1.75 trillion in a future offering, reported CoinGape.Related: Prediction markets like Kalshi are monetizing reality & the gaming industry is pushing backWhy NYSE owner ICE bet $1.6 billion on this marketPolymarket is not building this alone. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has sunk roughly $1.6 billion into the platform across two direct cash investments, with up to $40 million more in secondary purchases on the way, according to Intercontinental Exchange.That is not money the NYSE’s parent allocates to a sideshow. In my analysis, ICE has now committed more capital to Polymarket than the market cap of plenty of mid-sized regional banks in this country.The strategic logic gets clearer once you read the funding numbers around it. Polymarket’s main competitor, Kalshi, recently raised over $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, reported CoinDesk.Prediction markets are no longer a niche of academic curiosity. They are turning into a parallel market for sentiment, and Wall Street’s biggest exchange operator wants the rails.What makes today’s launch different is that the contracts are no longer just about elections or playoff games. They are about the same companies already driving much of the public-market AI trade through their suppliers, customers and capital partners.Where analysts land on retail prediction market tradingNot everyone is celebrating. Prediction markets are “retail’s shiny new toy,” wrote a team of Barclays analysts in a recent research note, according to CNBC.The same note observed that most current activity is concentrated in sports and political outcomes, not financial events. That mix is shifting quickly, and the shift is what attracts people like Jeff Kilburg, founder and chief executive of KKM Financial.Prediction markets are “taking the spotlight now because [they are] accessible,” Kilburg told CNBC, pointing to their binary outcomes and the wide menu of available events.Accessibility is also where the danger lives. Charles Schwab (SCHW) CEO Richard Wurster told analysts on a recent earnings call that the firm is steering clients away from contracts tied to “sports, politics, pop culture,” with a clear preference for financial event contracts, reported InvestmentNews.That distinction matters for any TheStreet reader thinking about clicking buy. A contract asking whether OpenAI crosses $1 trillion in valuation by year-end 2026 looks like a derivative. It behaves like a binary option. It pays like a coin flip.It does not give you a share of OpenAI. If the company is acquired, restructures or quietly pushes its IPO another year out, that contract can lose value fast.Settlement risk and source-integrity risk on event contracts have both been flagged as growing concerns, according to Baker McKenzie.What Main Street should watch on private company contractsMy read on this launch is that it is less about democratizing access and more about what comes next. ICE wants the data. Nasdaq wants the resolution business. Polymarket wants the volume. You are the volume.Three things worth watching from here.The CFTC has been signaling closer attention to event contracts, particularly around source integrity and contract interpretation, according to the CFTC itself.Robinhood (HOOD) has already started leaning into regulated prediction markets through partners like Kalshi, reported Yahoo Finance. If more brokers follow, these contracts stop being a niche tab in a crypto wallet and start showing up next to “stocks” and “options” in your retail app.And then there is SpaceX. If Elon Musk’s rocket company files for what could be the largest IPO in market history, every prediction contract priced ahead of that moment becomes a public record of who saw it coming.For my money, that one IPO is the cleanest test of whether private-company prediction markets are real price-discovery infrastructure or just a louder casino with better branding.Either way, Main Street investors now have a way to put dollars behind their guesses on companies that previously did not return their calls.Related: How prediction apps like Polymarket are redefining gambling