Sergey Kondratenko argues that artificial intelligence could make IPO preparation more efficient, while blockchain could change how securities are issued, recorded, settled, and traded. Both technologies have practical uses, but neither has displaced the conventional IPO process. AI can assist with analysis and document workflows; blockchain-based securities still raise questions about legal ownership, regulation, custody, and liquidity.
What Kondratenko says about technology and IPOs
In a May 2026 article, Kondratenko describes AI as a way to analyze financial statements, market trends, investor sentiment, alternative data, and virtual data-room documents. He also argues that predictive analytics can support valuation, transaction planning, and risk assessment. His blockchain thesis is broader: distributed ledgers and smart contracts could support digital securities, ownership records, settlement, and trading, potentially expanding access to investment.
These are attributed views, not independently verified performance results. Kondratenko’s published commentary says AI might compress some data-analysis work from weeks or months to hours, but that should not be read as a measured reduction in the full IPO timeline. Audit work, legal review, board decisions, underwriting, regulatory review, and investor education remain substantial parts of an offering. His 2026 discussion of AI and IPOs and earlier commentary on fintech and the IPO process outline these arguments.
Where technology can fit into an IPO
A conventional IPO typically involves a company decision, financial and legal diligence, preparation of offering documents, regulatory review, investor marketing, pricing and allocation, listing, and ongoing public-company reporting. Technology can support work within those stages, but it does not remove the issuer’s responsibilities or the need for regulated market participants.
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| IPO stage | Possible AI role | Possible blockchain role |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation and diligence | Classify documents, extract figures and clauses, compare versions, and flag missing information or inconsistencies. | Maintain timestamped records or permissioned ownership data. |
| Valuation and planning | Support scenario analysis, forecasting, comparable-company screening, and risk identification. | Usually indirect; it may support cap-table or asset records. |
| Investor relations | Cluster investor questions and analyze sentiment, subject to data-quality limits. | Support shareholder identity or voting systems in some designs. |
| Allocation, settlement, and trading | Help monitor operational anomalies or fraud signals. | Enable digital securities and programmable transfer or settlement rules. |
| Post-IPO controls | Assist with reporting workflows, disclosure consistency checks, and surveillance. | Provide an audit trail, though errors and privacy obligations still need handling. |
What AI can realistically do in IPO preparation
Review a data room faster
AI-supported tools can search and summarize large document collections, identify clauses, extract financial figures, compare document versions, and flag topics such as debt, litigation, intellectual property, privacy, employment, and change-of-control provisions. This can help teams prioritize review, but a flag is a lead for qualified reviewers, not a legal or accounting conclusion. Kondratenko specifically points to AI-assisted virtual data-room analysis in his published analysis.
Support forecasts and scenarios
Models can help teams explore revenue and margin scenarios, customer retention, demand patterns, market movements, and possible operating outcomes after listing. These outputs are probabilistic estimates, not dependable predictions. They can be distorted by incomplete or unrepresentative historical data, market regime changes, and noisy or manipulated inputs.
Assist with controls and monitoring
AI may help identify unusual transactions, monitor access to confidential files, detect sensitive personal information, check consistency across draft disclosures, and support compliance workflows. Management, auditors, lawyers, and compliance staff still need to assess the underlying evidence. The issuer remains responsible for the accuracy and completeness of its public statements.
AI risks that matter during an offering
- Incorrect extraction or invented conclusions: OCR can misread a decimal, currency, or negative sign; a model can overlook a legal qualification or produce an unsupported summary.
- Confidentiality and data leakage: Teams need to understand whether a vendor retains uploaded documents, uses them to improve models, or exposes them through connected tools and permissions.
- Bias and weak inputs: Sentiment models may mistake bot activity for investor demand, while alternative data can raise licensing, privacy, or representativeness concerns.
- Limited explainability and model drift: A team may not be able to explain a score, and a model trained in one market environment may perform poorly in another.
- False confidence and cyber risk: Faster review can generate more conclusions than humans can check. APIs, agents, and privileged connections also expand the attack surface.
- Disclosure liability: AI assistance does not transfer responsibility for filings or investor communications away from the issuer.
Before using AI on IPO materials, an issuer should establish access controls, review vendor data-retention terms, validate critical outputs against source documents, keep an audit trail, and define who approves model-assisted work.
IPO, ICO, STO, and tokenized securities are different
These terms describe different structures, not interchangeable routes to the same kind of investment. The legal rights depend on the instrument, how it is issued, and the applicable jurisdiction.
| Term | What it generally describes | Key investor question |
|---|---|---|
| IPO | A public offering of securities, commonly shares, followed by trading through market infrastructure. | What rights attach to the shares, and what disclosures and trading rules apply? |
| ICO | A sale of digital tokens; the token may be a security or may fall into another legal category depending on its structure and jurisdiction. | What does the token legally represent, and is the offering compliant where it is marketed? |
| STO | An offering in which a token represents a security. | How are securities-law, custody, transfer, and disclosure requirements met? |
| Tokenized security | A stock, bond, fund interest, or similar instrument represented or recorded using blockchain infrastructure. | Does the token convey direct ownership, an intermediary-held interest, or only synthetic exposure? |
The SEC’s Investor.gov describes three tokenization models: issuer-sponsored securities recorded or issued directly on a blockchain; custodial tokens representing an indirect interest held through an intermediary; and synthetic tokens that provide economic exposure to a reference asset without necessarily conveying ownership rights. The distinctions can affect voting, dividends, transfer rights, and recourse. Investor.gov’s tokenized securities explanation discusses these models.
What blockchain could change—and what it cannot guarantee
Blockchain may support faster settlement, programmable transfer restrictions, transaction histories, automated corporate actions, digital cap tables, or fractional ownership structures. It may reduce some reconciliation work or enable trading hours that differ from those of a traditional exchange. Those are possible infrastructure benefits, not guaranteed reductions in total issuance cost or improvements in liquidity.
A blockchain cannot establish that the financial information entered into it is true. An immutable record can preserve an incorrect entry, and smart contracts cannot resolve every legal dispute. Public visibility may conflict with privacy and confidentiality obligations. Wallet loss, key compromise, chain outages, and mistakes in approved-wallet settings create operational risks. Liquidity also depends on buyers, market depth, spreads, price discovery, transfer rules, and the ability to convert between instruments—not simply on whether a token can trade around the clock.
Nor does tokenization automatically remove securities-law obligations or intermediaries. In the United States, tokenized securities can remain subject to securities regulation and requirements concerning matters such as disclosure, anti-fraud protections, custody, and market structure. The precise analysis depends on the token’s rights, ownership record, transfer process, offering type, venue, and jurisdiction. See the SEC Crypto Task Force materials and the SEC Investor Advisory Committee’s discussion of tokenized equity, market structure, liquidity, and investor protection.
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A current U.S. example: Figure’s hybrid model
Figure Technology Solutions’ SEC filings offer a concrete example of blockchain-based public-equity infrastructure operating alongside conventional market structures. The company describes traditional Nasdaq-listed Class A shares as well as a separate blockchain-stock class intended to trade through an alternative trading system (ATS), rather than Nasdaq. Its disclosures describe conversion between blockchain stock and traditional shares and restrict blockchain-stock transfers to wallets that complete KYC and anti-money-laundering onboarding.
This is a hybrid arrangement, not evidence that a typical IPO has become intermediary-free. The structure retains a trading venue, identity checks, and conventional securities-law considerations. Figure’s February 2026 filing describes the blockchain stock and related restrictions; its 2026 annual filing discusses its On-Chain Public Equity Network and blockchain stock.
Quick Recap
What issuers should assess before adopting these tools
- Jurisdiction and offering type: Determine where securities will be offered and traded, and whether the transaction is public or private.
- Rights and official ownership record: Specify whether the instrument is ordinary equity, restricted equity, debt, a fund interest, or synthetic exposure, and identify which record controls legal ownership.
- Venue and investor eligibility: Establish whether trading will occur on an exchange, ATS, private platform, or another venue, and who may participate.
- Custody and transfer rules: Decide how assets are held, how transfers are screened, and what happens if a wallet is compromised, frozen, or lost.
- Liquidity and interoperability: Evaluate likely market depth, spreads, connected venues, and conversion or reconciliation with conventional shares.
- Compliance, audit, and incident response: Plan for KYC/AML, sanctions screening, recordkeeping, regulator and auditor access, smart-contract errors, and incorrect ownership entries.
- Vendor and infrastructure dependence: Identify concentration risks involving a single chain, ATS, custodian, wallet system, oracle, or data provider.
- AI governance: Set rules for confidential-data handling, human review, output validation, model access, and approval of AI-assisted disclosures.
What investors should check
- Does the token provide ownership of the issuer’s share, an indirect interest through a custodian, or synthetic economic exposure?
- What voting, dividend, and other corporate-action rights does the instrument provide?
- Which record is the official shareholder record, and who maintains it?
- Can the security legally be transferred or sold in your jurisdiction, and through what venue?
- Who holds custody, what protections apply, and what is the recovery process if access is lost?
- Is conversion into a conventional share possible, and under what conditions?
- What are the fees, trading hours, spreads, and settlement terms—and is there evidence of actual market depth?
- Which regulators oversee the issuer, venue, and custodian, and is the product being accurately described as an IPO rather than a private placement, ICO, STO, or secondary-market instrument?
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