Dubai, UAE (PinionNewswire) — Hecto, the private-markets infrastructure firm, has brought private markets onchain on the Canton Network with the launch of the first private market exposure (PMX) token. The instrument, $NEOPRIME, is issued by Neoprime on Hecto's infrastructure and opens access to a basket of late-stage private companies building America's next industrial base, a market that has historically been closed to everyone but institutions and the already wealthy. The first trading pool opens today.

$NEOPRIME gives onchain investors backed exposure to a basket of America's frontier private industrial companies, with Erebor, the hard-tech bank, as the first position.

For most investors, the strongest companies of this cycle are now built and scaled entirely in private. By the time they reach public markets, if they ever do, the majority of the value has already been captured by venture funds and insiders. $NEOPRIME is designed to change who gets to participate, giving ordinary investors a route into companies they would otherwise only read about.

A Tokenized Debenture With Contractual Creditor Rights

$NEOPRIME is issued as a tokenized debenture under British Virgin Islands law. Holders receive contractual creditor rights against Neoprime's special purpose vehicle; they do not receive shares in the underlying companies. Exposure is held through first- and second-layer SPVs against verified shares, meaning each position is backed by a real holding rather than a synthetic price reference. According to the announcement, this structure is what separates genuine, backed exposure from the unauthorized "wrapper" tokens that have drawn scrutiny elsewhere in the market.

"After a year of careful planning, research and development, it feels incredible to witness the launch of the first pre-IPO tokens built on Hecto infrastructure and trading on Canton," said Ultan Miller, co-founder and CEO of Hecto. "This is not just a milestone for Hecto, or for Canton, but for the pre-IPO market as a whole. $NEOPRIME sets a new bar in pre-IPO access onchain, giving token holders better disclosures, better data and fairer pricing than ever before."

"The old primes won the last century. They will not build this one," said Ross Belhomme, Trustee at Neoprime. "$NEOPRIME is how that rebuild is owned while it is still private: a named book, a published NAV, and a ticker that is the thesis."

The Basket: America's Frontier Industrial Base

$NEOPRIME is built around a curated basket of private companies at the frontier of American industry and hard technology: Anduril, Project Prometheus, Figure AI, Crusoe, The Boring Company, Shield AI, Castelion, Hadrian, Saronic, Stoke Space, and Erebor.

Erebor, the specialist bank for hard technology, is the first completed investment and is now available onchain for the first time. Positions in Shield AI and Anduril are in process, with the remainder of the basket to follow as each is secured. Because exposure depends on verified holdings, how quickly those in-process positions convert into completed ones will determine how much of the announced basket is actually represented onchain at any given time.

Eligibility for the index is deliberately narrow. A company qualifies only if it is pre-IPO, valued at a minimum of $1 billion, and has adequate pricing data available from independent third-party providers. The result is a book of names that are large, late-stage, and genuinely marked, rather than speculative early bets.

A Better Pricing Mechanism

$NEOPRIME is built to track the value of the assets behind it rather than drift to a large premium when demand is high. When the token trades above its net asset value, eligible parties can mint new tokens. That new capital buys more underlying shares, increasing supply and pulling the price back toward fair value.

Most tokenized pre-IPO products are static wrappers around a fixed pool of scarce shares. When demand is strong, the price simply runs to a steep premium, and buyers pay what amounts to a scarcity tax on top of the actual company exposure. $NEOPRIME is designed to remove that tax.

When a company in the basket announces an IPO process, its position is sold in the secondary market and the proceeds support a buyback of $NEOPRIME, returning realized value to remaining holders. Outside of those IPO-triggered buybacks, a holder's exit runs through onchain trading pools such as the one opening today, and how the token trades relative to its published NAV in live markets will offer the first real-world reading on that design.

Private Markets Arrive on Canton

The launch marks the arrival of private market exposure products on the Canton Network, the institutional blockchain built for privacy, compliance, and programmable settlement. $NEOPRIME is Hecto's first PMX token and the foundation of a product category the company intends to expand across the most in-demand private companies in the world. Subsequent PMX issuance on the same infrastructure is the natural follow-on to watch.

About Hecto

Hecto is a private markets infrastructure firm building the rails that open access to the world's most valuable private companies. Its infrastructure lets issuers bring compliant, backed private market exposure onchain, with $NEOPRIME, issued by Neoprime, the first token built on it. Founded by a team including former Goldman Sachs and Barclays executives, Hecto develops tokenized private market products on the Canton Network, with the goal of making exposure to high-growth private companies as accessible as investing in public markets. More information is available at hecto.inc.

About Neoprime

Neoprime is an investment vehicle focused on America's next industrial giants, the private companies rebuilding the country's industrial base. Its single token, $NEOPRIME, is a tokenized debenture that gives onchain investors backed, contractual exposure to that portfolio.

Media Contact Information

Yasmin, PR Genius — yasmin@theprgenius.com