Is that a thing in the US? You start a company and there's no need to register it with the government? Or it gets registered but there's no public records of it?
Private companies don’t need to publicly divulge a lot, though. It’s between the company and their investors. It’s only once a company wants to trade publicly that they have to provide a lot of public details and financials.
A sole proprietorship doesn’t have to register anything ever at all.
There are ways to do business activities yourself without registering an official business, though it’s generally discouraged because forming an LLC is so cheap and easy and provides some protections and benefits.
However, details like owners and organizers aren't always Available.
It gets further complicated with Series LLCs.
Congress passed a law that would have required "beneficial ownership" registration with law enforcement (FinCen), however, this registration would not have been public.
Further, it was found unconstitutional and enforcement of the registration requirement indefinitely suspended.
In general, if you are doing business in a state under a name or entiry other than your own legal name, you will be required to file something with the state, and that filing will include a registered agent where legal process can be served on the business, and this information will be public.
But if they aren't doing business publicly yet, no one will know the name of the business, so they can't look it up! It sounds like the name mentioned in the article may just be a code name.
One of the more absurd things I can do is have two LLCs own each other, and then have outside management.