For a while, Linqto made owning a slice of a private company feel disarmingly ordinary. An eligible investor could open an app, browse names such as Ripple, Circle, Brex or Epic Games, review a company page, fund an account and place an order. The screens did not resemble the wood-paneled office usually associated with private equity. They resembled a shop. The minimum, once advertised as low as $1,000 on some offerings, did not resemble private equity either.
That was the product insight: a huge amount of desire had accumulated outside the velvet rope. Technology companies were staying private longer. Their names were familiar to consumers and employees well before an IPO, but access to their shares remained fragmented, broker-driven and expensive. Linqto took the processes of sourcing, diligence, paperwork, funding and portfolio monitoring and compressed them into a consumer interface.
By April 2024, the company said more than 750,000 people had registered across 110 countries and that members had invested more than $350 million across over 60 companies. Those figures were company-reported, and registrations were not the same as funded accounts. A later historical transaction dataset released during bankruptcy covered more than 13,000 customers. Even so, the contrast describes the opportunity neatly: private-market curiosity was enormous; actual transactions still belonged to a narrower group.
The shopping cart and the wrapper
The transaction was not a direct purchase of stock from a famous startup. Linqto’s published model said it bought shares, placed them into affiliated series LLC investment vehicles and sold customers units in those vehicles. A unit represented an indirect economic interest in the underlying company. If that company went public or was acquired, the hoped-for ending was a distribution of public shares, cash or both.
Linqto acted as principal rather than simply pairing a buyer with a seller. That distinction was its competitive pitch. Marketplaces can make investors wait while a transaction is located, negotiated and approved. Linqto said it bought inventory first, so a completed purchase gave the customer immediate ownership of the fund unit. It promoted an all-in price: a variable premium was built into the cost, while carry, profit fees, legal fees and administrative fees were advertised as absent.
The model solved several practical problems at once. Individuals did not need to know a selling employee, negotiate a block, form their own special-purpose vehicle or chase signatures. They received a portfolio view and company updates. Linqto’s investment team selected mid-to-late-stage businesses it believed had a plausible route to an IPO or acquisition. The catalog crossed artificial intelligence, fintech, health technology, aerospace, software and digital assets.
“When you invest with Linqto, you’re purchasing units in a private fund (series LLC) that holds shares of the underlying private company.”Linqto’s explanation of its offering
A fintech company that changed its subject
Linqto did not begin as the unicorn store. Bill Sarris founded the company in 2009, and its earlier work focused on delivering financial applications for banks and credit unions. In 2018, it worked with Keiretsu Forum on Keiretsu Connect, an app for an international network of accredited investors. That project was a bridge: Linqto was still building software for an organization, but the users and the merchandise were already investors and private deals.
The direct investing platform arrived in 2020. It benefited from two coinciding moods: frustration with public-market access and fascination with private technology companies. Linqto added the rituals of consumer growth - referrals, rewards, educational content, mobile notifications - to a category accustomed to subscription documents and phone calls. Its list of historical liquidity events included companies that later became public or were acquired, among them Coinbase, Robinhood, SoFi, NerdWallet, Marqeta and Innovium.
It also kept reaching for liquidity, the private market’s most awkward feature. In 2022, Linqto acquired Trustline, whose technology was built on the XRP Ledger, and spoke about a blockchain-based exchange for private securities. It obtained regulatory approval for an alternative trading system through its broker-dealer affiliate and later announced member-to-member trading functionality for some positions. These efforts were a recognition that access is only half a product. Investors also want a way out.
The year the interface stopped
Linqto’s peak and reversal arrived close together. In April 2024, it announced a proposed combination with Blockchain Coinvestors Acquisition Corp. I that valued the transaction at about $700 million and would have taken Linqto public. The deal did not close. In March 2025, a new executive team led by Dan Siciliano said it was investigating historical business operations and regulatory compliance after inquiries from regulators.
Revenue-generating operations ceased that month, according to later court filings. On July 8, 2025, Linqto Inc. and three affiliates filed voluntary Chapter 11 cases in the Southern District of Texas. The company said it had found serious defects in how the business had been formed, structured and operated, alongside alleged securities-law violations and regulatory investigations. Those allegations concern prior management and remain allegations where they have not been finally adjudicated.
The bankruptcy changed the central user question. It was no longer “Which private company should I choose?” It was “How is my interest recorded, held and recovered?” That is the uncomfortable genius of the Linqto story: the front end taught a mass audience to care about private companies; the restructuring taught the same audience to care about entity charts.
750,000 registered users and more than $350 million invested, plus a proposed public listing.
New leaders investigate historical practices; revenue-generating activity ceases.
Linqto and three affiliates enter a court-supervised restructuring.
The bankruptcy court approves a reorganization plan with two customer-recovery pathways.
The court confirmed Linqto’s plan on February 6, 2026. The proposed architecture gave customers choices tied to a liquidating trust or a closed-end fund. Forge Global was selected for the trustee role and VanEck for the fund-manager role, subject to the agreements, approvals and implementation needed to make the plan effective. Confirmation was a major legal milestone, not a magic conversion of every account balance into cash.
Where Linqto fits now
Before the restructuring, Linqto sat between private-share marketplaces and managed alternative-investment products. Forge, EquityZen, Hiive and Nasdaq Private Market help different combinations of shareholders, accredited buyers and institutions transact in private securities. Republic aggregates alternative offerings. Equitybee finances employees who want to exercise options. Private banks and brokers arrange bespoke blocks for wealthier clients. Linqto’s twist was to own or control inventory, wrap it, and merchandise it directly to individuals.
Its customers were not venture funds trying to win board seats. They were people seeking a smaller piece of a recognizable private company, often for portfolio diversification or the chance to participate before an IPO. The benefit was convenience and a relatively low entry point. The risks were the familiar ones - uncertain valuation, transfer restrictions, long holding periods, no guaranteed exit and possible total loss - plus the structural risk created by investing through an intermediary vehicle.
What separated Linqto from competitors was also what made its internal machinery consequential. A bulletin-board marketplace can say it introduced two parties. A principal-led platform that purchases shares, creates vehicles, sets the retail price and administers eventual distributions makes a longer chain of promises. The customer experiences one button. The company must maintain every link.
There is still something worth learning from the original product. Linqto understood that private markets had a language problem. It translated “special-purpose vehicle,” “subscription agreement” and “liquidity event” into browse, buy, track and exit. It made research and portfolio monitoring feel approachable. A future builder could steal that clarity while making the legal receipt just as legible: name the exact entity, show what it owns, disclose the premium in dollars and percentage terms, identify the custodian, explain voting and transfer rights, and let the customer export the record.
The broader market has not abandoned the idea. Private assets continue moving toward digital distribution, and individual investors continue asking for earlier access. But Linqto’s history narrows the acceptable definition of “simple.” Simple cannot mean that the customer never sees the structure. It should mean the structure is shown so clearly that the customer can explain it without a lawyer.
The interface was Linqto’s invention. The ownership record became its test.
Linqto’s immediate future belongs to the restructuring process rather than the old shopping flow. Its longer legacy may be more durable: it proved that individual demand for private-company exposure could be gathered at consumer scale, then demonstrated why demand alone is not enough. In private markets, the product is not merely the opportunity on the screen. The product is the chain of title all the way to the exit.