Wall Street Heavyweights Back Corastone's Private Market Overhaul

NEW YORK, NY – March 09, 2026 – A significant shift is underway in the plumbing of the private markets, as a growing coalition of financial giants throws its weight behind a single technology platform. Corastone, a fintech firm building what it calls the “hyperscaler for private-market investing,” today announced that Fidelity Investments, Future Standard, and Hamilton Lane have joined its ranks as investors.

This move adds three more influential names to an already formidable roster of participants that includes Apollo, Franklin Templeton, KKR, and Morgan Stanley. The expanding institutional adoption underscores a critical turning point for the booming but notoriously cumbersome world of alternative investments. As investor demand for private equity, credit, and real estate soars, the antiquated, manual processes that underpin the industry are straining at the seams, creating a powerful incentive for a large-scale technological overhaul.

Solving the 'Plumbing' Problem of Private Markets

For decades, the private markets have operated on a complex and fragmented web of legacy systems. Transactions have been characterized by endless email chains, PDF documents, and manual data entry, leading to significant operational friction, high costs, and an increased risk of errors. This lack of a unified, digital infrastructure has been a major barrier to scalability, limiting the ability of wealth managers to offer these products broadly and for general partners to manage capital efficiently.

Unlike the public markets, which benefit from centralized clearinghouses and standardized data flows, the private markets have lacked a common operating language. Each connection between a general partner, a fund administrator, and a wealth management platform has often required a custom, point-to-point integration, creating a brittle and inefficient ecosystem. This operational drag has not only slowed down transactions but has also made it difficult to provide investors with the transparency and real-time data they have come to expect from other asset classes.

“As access to private markets continues to scale, firms need standardized, digital infrastructure that supports higher volumes and more complex structures without adding operational burden,” said Hamid Gayibov, Co-Founder and President of Corastone, in a statement. The challenge has been to create a system that all parties can trust and adopt, a neutral ground to rebuild the industry’s foundational processes from the ground up.

A New Digital Backbone for Investing

Corastone aims to be that neutral ground. The company is tackling the industry’s core inefficiencies by providing a shared infrastructure built on a proprietary, private, and permissioned blockchain network. This technology serves as a single, shared ledger for all market participants, designed to replace the patchwork of disconnected systems with a unified platform that enables true “straight-through processing.”

By building on a permissioned blockchain, Corastone ensures that only verified and approved institutions can participate, maintaining the strict security and compliance standards required in financial services. Within this secure environment, the platform digitizes the entire investment lifecycle. It transforms analog workflows into standardized, real-time data flows, from investor onboarding and subscriptions to capital calls and reporting. This creates a single, verifiable record of every transaction, eliminating the need for constant, manual reconciliation between parties.

This unified architecture helps firms scale their private market activities without the corresponding increase in operational complexity. The vision, as Gayibov puts it, is to “help investors of all sizes access private market assets as efficiently and reliably as public markets.”

A Resounding Vote of Confidence

The latest investment from Fidelity, Future Standard, and Hamilton Lane is more than just a capital injection; it is a powerful endorsement of Corastone's infrastructure-first approach. These firms are not just passive investors but are also key players in the ecosystem that stands to benefit directly from a more efficient operational backbone. Their participation signals a broad industry consensus that a common, enterprise-ready solution is necessary for the next phase of growth.

Hari Moorthy, Chief Technology Officer at Future Standard, highlighted the need for a unifying technology. “We saw a need in the marketplace for an infrastructure technology that connects the various point-to-point systems used by investors and enables true straight-through-processing of transactions,” he stated, adding that their investment reflects confidence in Corastone's long-term role.

This sentiment was echoed by Hamilton Lane, a firm that specializes in private markets and has witnessed the operational hurdles firsthand. “We've seen firsthand how operational complexity can limit participation in private markets,” said Griff Norville, Head of Technology Solutions at Hamilton Lane. He noted that Corastone’s platform “removes that friction, which we believe will help unlock the industry's next growth phase.”

Redrawing the Private Market Tech Map

Corastone’s strategy differentiates it from other well-known alternative investment platforms like iCapital and CAIS. While those firms have been instrumental in widening access and improving distribution by connecting financial advisors to a menu of alternative funds, they function primarily as marketplaces or storefronts. Corastone, in contrast, is focused on building the underlying infrastructure—the digital roads and rails upon which the entire market operates.

By positioning itself as a neutral, conflict-free infrastructure provider that does not sell or distribute investment products, Corastone aims to serve the entire ecosystem, including potential competitors. A more efficient backbone could, in theory, make distribution platforms like iCapital and CAIS even more effective by streamlining the post-trade processing that happens behind the scenes. This focus on being the foundational “plumbing” is a key reason it has been able to bring together such a diverse group of industry titans, including direct competitors, who all share a common need for better operational efficiency.

The convergence of these financial giants on a single platform is a rare and telling event. It suggests the industry is collectively recognizing that the cost of fragmentation has become too high. By backing a shared, neutral infrastructure, these firms are not just placing a bet on a single company but are actively collaborating to build a more scalable and resilient foundation for the future of private market investing.