Asset Managers Back Private Market Platform
A new private-market investment platform, Corastone, has attracted investment from major players like Fidelity and Future Fund, who join existing backers Apollo and KKR. The expanded participation underscores growing institutional demand for standardized infrastructure to access private market opportunities.
Corastone, led by co-founder and CEO Rashad Kurbanov, is built on a permissioned blockchain to function as a unified infrastructure for the private markets. The platform aims to replace manual paperwork and fragmented systems by connecting general partners, wealth managers, and fund administrators on a single, automated network. Backers KKR and Apollo Global Management are not just clients; they have also taken minority equity stakes in the company. According to Doug Krupa, KKR's Head of Global Wealth Solutions, the firm actively facilitated introductions to other asset managers like Morgan Stanley to address the "clunkiness and complexity" in transactions for semi-liquid funds. The platform directly targets the operational friction that creates high barriers to entry in private markets, such as digitizing investor onboarding and automating the validation steps that currently rely on manual processes. This infrastructure is critical for efficiently processing not just initial subscriptions but also future capital calls, valuation updates, and redemptions. This technological push aligns with a broader industry shift toward the "democratization" of private assets, as global private market AUM is projected to approach $25 trillion by 2029. For firms like Fidelity, which recently launched private market model portfolios, scalable infrastructure is essential to offer these products to a wider base of accredited investors. Morgan Stanley's adoption of Corastone is part of a larger strategic initiative to expand private market access for its wealth management clients. This move follows the bank's agreement to acquire EquityZen, a platform for trading shares of private companies, signaling a multi-pronged approach to building out its capabilities in the space. The push into semi-liquid structures is not without risk. The underlying assets remain illiquid, creating a potential mismatch with investor redemption expectations. The sector faced a significant "liquidity test" in February 2026, when redemption restrictions at a major fund sparked a double-digit sell-off in the stock prices of both KKR and Apollo, exposing the structural vulnerabilities of retail-accessible private market products.
