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The UK’s home for tokenised equity. Independent news, insight and resources for founders raising capital, investors deploying it, and the firms supporting both — as the regulation, infrastructure and opportunity converge.

Securitize and Cantor Fitzgerald Partner to Bring US IPOs and Follow-On Offerings Onchain

  • Writer: Shawn Jhanji
    Shawn Jhanji
  • Jul 21
  • 3 min read
Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize announced a partnership on 15 July to bring initial public offerings and follow-on share offerings onto blockchain infrastructure, extending tokenisation into the point where companies actually raise capital rather than just the secondary trading that has dominated the sector so far. Under the agreement, Cantor will run the equity capital markets and trading side of the deal, the parts of an IPO it already handles for traditional issuers. Securitize supplies the tokenisation infrastructure and will use its SEC registered broker dealer affiliate, Securitize Markets, to participate in the offering and settlement process. The tokens issued through the partnership represent the security itself, carrying the same rights as the underlying shares, rather than a synthetic wrapper or a special purpose vehicle sitting on top of it. The detail matters for UK readers watching this space, as it's where in the funding lifecycle tokenisation is now landing. Most of the tokenisation activity in this sector so far, from tokenised stock listings to major custodial platform launches, has focused on bringing existing securities onchain after the fact, giving investors programmable exposure to shares that already trade elsewhere. Cantor and Securitize are proposing something earlier in the chain: the offering itself, the moment a company issues new shares and takes in new capital, built on tokenised rails from the outset. Securitize is no stranger to this territory. Its own stock began trading on the NYSE onchain at listing in early July, making SECZ the largest tokenised stock at launch. The Cantor partnership extends that playbook to other issuers rather than just its own listing, positioning Securitize as infrastructure for other companies' capital raises rather than a one-off demonstration of what tokenised listing can look like. The pitch for founders and their advisers, once this kind of infrastructure matures and, as it extends beyond the US IPO market it currently targets, is a familiar one: more efficient fiancial plumbing - modernised ownership records, a broader base of investors able to participate in an offering, and settlement that does not require the layers of intermediaries a traditional IPO carries. Cantor and Securitize frame the benefit as efficiency and transparency for issuers rather than a change to who can invest, and the structure remains inside the existing framework of a regulated public offering rather than opening it to a different investor base. There is no UK equivalent of this specific large scale mechanism yet, and the London Stock Exchange's own tokenisation ambitions, set out through HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion taskforce, are focused on wholesale market infrastructure and repo rather than IPO issuance. But there are smaller companies experimenting in the UK space and the direction of travel, from secondary tokenisation toward primary issuance, is the one worth watching, because it is the point at which tokenisation stops being a wrapper around existing capital markets activity and starts becoming the way new capital is actually raised.

Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize announced a partnership on 15 July to bring initial public offerings and follow-on share offerings onto blockchain infrastructure, extending tokenisation into the point where companies actually raise capital rather than just the secondary trading that has dominated the sector so far.


Under the agreement, Cantor will run the equity capital markets and trading side of the deal, the parts of an IPO it already handles for traditional issuers. Securitize supplies the tokenisation infrastructure and will use its SEC registered broker dealer affiliate, Securitize Markets, to participate in the offering and settlement process.


The tokens issued through the partnership represent the security itself, carrying the same rights as the underlying shares, rather than a synthetic wrapper or a special purpose vehicle sitting on top of it.


The detail matters for UK readers watching this space, as it's where in the funding lifecycle tokenisation is now landing.


Most of the tokenisation activity in this sector so far, from tokenised stock listings to major custodial platform launches, has focused on bringing existing securities onchain after the fact, giving investors programmable exposure to shares that already trade elsewhere. Cantor and Securitize are proposing something earlier in the chain: the offering itself, the moment a company issues new shares and takes in new capital, built on tokenised rails from the outset.


Securitize is no stranger to this territory. Its own stock began trading on the NYSE onchain at listing in early July, making SECZ the largest tokenised stock at launch. The Cantor partnership extends that playbook to other issuers rather than just its own listing, positioning Securitize as infrastructure for other companies' capital raises rather than a one-off demonstration of what tokenised listing can look like.


The pitch for founders and their advisers, once this kind of infrastructure matures and, as it extends beyond the US IPO market it currently targets, is a familiar one: more efficient fiancial plumbing - modernised ownership records, a broader base of investors able to participate in an offering, and settlement that does not require the layers of intermediaries a traditional IPO carries. Cantor and Securitize frame the benefit as efficiency and transparency for issuers rather than a change to who can invest, and the structure remains inside the existing framework of a regulated public offering rather than opening it to a different investor base.


There is no UK equivalent of this specific large scale mechanism yet, and the London Stock Exchange's own tokenisation ambitions, set out through HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion taskforce, are focused on wholesale market infrastructure and repo rather than IPO issuance. But there are smaller companies experimenting in the UK space and the direction of travel, from secondary tokenisation toward primary issuance, is the one worth watching, because it is the point at which tokenisation stops being a wrapper around existing capital markets activity and starts becoming the way new capital is actually raised.


Key Takeaways


  • Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize will bring IPOs and follow-on offerings onto blockchain infrastructure, using Securitize's SEC registered broker dealer affiliate for offering and settlement.

  • The tokens represent the underlying security itself, with the same rights and entitlements, rather than a synthetic wrapper.

  • This moves tokenisation earlier in the capital formation process, from secondary trading of existing shares toward the point where new capital is actually raised.

  • Securitize's own NYSE listing in early July, tokenised at launch, appears to have been the proof point behind extending the model to other issuers.

  • No UK equivalent exists yet, but the shift from secondary tokenisation to primary issuance is the trend worth tracking as the UK's own tokenisation infrastructure develops.


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