Oct 2 (Reuters) - California fintech giant SoFi

is teaming up with British capital markets platform PrimaryBid

Technologies to expand its initial public offering share

placement business, the company told Reuters.

SoFi's new directed share platform, which went live on

Wednesday, is designed to allow companies raising capital to

allocate a portion of their offering to employees, customers and

other individual investors more efficiently than similar

services provided by investment banks that underwrite IPOs, SoFi

CEO Anthony Noto said in an interview.

SoFi's move is another example of how fintech companies are

increasingly encroaching on the territory of traditional

financial firms, leveraging technology to go toe-to-toe with

Wall Street.

SoFi and rival fintechs like Robinhood have been

pushing into early retail IPO access, which has long been the

exclusive domain of Wall Street funds.

Last year, SoFi offered retail customers a chance to buy

into the IPOs of Instacart and Arm Holdings

before shares began trading. Such early access allows investors

to snap up a company's shares at a discount assuming the share

price rises after the stock goes public, though there are no

guarantees.

SoFi's partnership with PrimaryBid will expand its IPO

offerings by creating a digital way for companies to place

shares with key stakeholders and raise more capital at the IPO

stage. That process has historically been clunky and manual,

Noto said.

"It's the natural evolution of our desire to give investors

more and more access to the vehicles that allow the

ultra-wealthy to get unique investment opportunities," he added.

PrimaryBid, which provides technology that connects

individual investors with issuing companies and counts SoftBank,

Fidelity and London Stock Exchange Group ( LDNXF ) among its

backers, will provide the underlying technology for the SoFi

platform.

"Companies want intelligent, targeted investor inclusion at

IPO to enfranchise those people who matter to their long-term

success," said Anand Sambasivan, CEO of PrimaryBid, in a

statement.

The move comes as the IPO market has bounced back in 2024 on

receding recession fears and a searing stock market rally driven

by U.S. Federal Reserve rate cuts.

Thomson Reuters ( TRI ), which owns Reuters News, holds a

minority stake in LSEG.