On September 20, a screenshot about "Binance Wallet is about to launch Polymarket Pre-IPO" circulated on X.

Polymarket was founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan, who serves as CEO. Users can use funds to trade on the possible outcomes of politics, sports, and global events. In early September, media reports said that 1789 Capital is leading a financing round of about $1 billion, bringing the platform's post-money valuation to $21 billion.

If viewed through the lens of "going public," Polymarket's series of moves over the past few months suddenly make sense: a group of executives from Amazon, Uber, the NYSE, Coinbase, and Robinhood have joined in quick succession; power in the U.S. business has been redistributed; the on-chain order book is being prepared for a complete rewrite; and the company has also begun filling roles in CFO, compliance, risk control, and government relations.

It appears the platform is equipping itself with a skeleton more like that of a financial company.

Executives from major companies parachute in to pave the way for an IPO

On September 10, Warren Jenson joined Polymarket as its first company-level CFO. He previously served as a finance chief at Amazon and several other giants, and has long been responsible for finance, capital strategy, and long-term planning at large companies.

A few days later, Collin McKinney Hill, formerly a general manager at DoorDash and chief of staff to the founder of Bridgewater, became vice president of operations.

Other core personnel include Travis VanderZanden, who previously worked at Uber, in charge of growth; former Coinbase executive Dan Lee in charge of the U.S. business; former Robinhood executive Megan McGrath as chief compliance officer; and Hayk Mkrtchyan, who previously oversaw the core matching system at the NYSE, as head of engineering for Polymarket's U.S. exchange.

These people's backgrounds come from different companies, yet they correspond respectively to several of the gaps most easily exposed at a large financial platform: finance, operations, growth, U.S. business, compliance, product, and trading infrastructure are almost all being overhauled.

According to The Information, Dan Lee, recruited from Coinbase, has already gradually taken over Polymarket's U.S. business at the practical working level. According to people close to the company, employees report to Lee, not to the nominal CEO of the U.S. business, Justin Hertzberg.

The more direct changes are happening within the engineering team. Josh Stevens, who joined in March this year as Vice President of DeFi Engineering and previously served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Aave, publicly stated that the code rapidly built in the early days can no longer be salvaged long-term, and the team is preparing to rewrite the matching engine.

His reasoning was also straightforward: the platform is already an exchange handling user funds, not a small product where trial and error can be done at will.

If these moves are viewed through the lens of listing logic, this looks very much like an emergency effort to shore up the organizational capabilities of a financial platform.

$21 billion valuation — who holds this platform?

Currently, the market's valuation anchors for Polymarket are roughly distributed between $15 billion and $21 billion. The only investor with truly reliable, public data is Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE.

As of June 30, 2026, ICE holds approximately 22% of the platform's issued shares and also has the exclusive right to nominate and vote on one director. If converted on that basis alone, ICE's 22% stake corresponds to approximately $4.6 billion; if calculated on a fully diluted basis of 14%, it would be approximately $2.9 billion.

Unlike ICE, other financiers can only be roughly estimated based on the amount invested in each round and the post-money valuation at the time: Blockchain Capital holds approximately $2.3 billion (11%), 1789 Capital holds approximately $300 million (1.4%), and CEO Coplan holds approximately $2.3 billion (11%).

It is worth mentioning that Trump Jr., the eldest son of Trump, serves as a partner at 1789 Capital and was already a member of Polymarket's advisory board as early as August 2025.

An equity transfer packaged as a listing

In this screenshot from September 20, what may truly be worth paying attention to is not only Polymarket, but also Paimon Finance. The screenshot links "Polymarket's upcoming IPO" with $pPOLY, and the full name of $pPOLY is Paimon Polymarket SPV Token.

Paimon is a platform that tokenizes private equity and Pre-IPO assets. Its model is to package assets related to private companies into on-chain tokens. The company has previously brought assets related to private companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic into the same product system.

Binance, mentioned in the screenshot, has also made the nature of this kind of product very clear: Pre-Access assets are provided by third parties, and the Binance Wallet is only an access point; such assets do not represent direct shares in the underlying company, nor do they guarantee that the relevant company will definitely complete an IPO in the future.

Therefore, a more accurate statement is not "Polymarket is issuing its own Pre-IPO stock," but rather "Paimon may be packaging private equity related to Polymarket into a token that can circulate on-chain."

For Polymarket, the real IPO may not have started yet; but trading around IPO expectations has already appeared in advance.

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