One of many causes I’ve been a long-time supporter and affiliate accomplice of Fundrise is its willingness to innovate. Since its founding in 2012, shortly after the JOBS Act opened non-public investments to retail traders, Fundrise has persistently appeared for methods to democratize entry to institutional-quality investments.
From launching diversified non-public actual property funds like its Heartland and Earnings funds, to increasing into enterprise capital by the Innovation Fund, Fundrise has steadily pushed into areas that had been as soon as reserved for giant establishments and ultra-high-net-worth people.
So after I obtained an e mail from Fundrise saying its plans to listing the Innovation Fund on the New York Inventory Change, below the ticker VCX, I used to be intrigued.
I are usually old-school in the case of investing. If one thing isn’t damaged, I’m typically reluctant to alter it. I’ve been an investor within the Innovation Fund since 2023 and now have over $700,000 invested throughout three accounts. My plan is to carry for the following 5–10 years and journey the AI wave with a long-term mindset, largely with my kids’s future in thoughts.
Listed below are my preliminary ideas on the Innovation Fund probably itemizing on the NYSE after a day of digesting the information. I’ll replace this publish as I be taught extra and proceed to refine my views.
The Potential For Immediate Liquidity In Enterprise Capital
I’ve invested in conventional enterprise capital funds for over 15 years. That have has conditioned me to count on zero liquidity for a very long time. After I allocate capital to enterprise, usually as much as about 20% of my investable belongings, I assume I received’t see that cash once more for a minimum of 10 years.
The opposite 80% of my portfolio offers liquidity. Shares, bonds, and even cryptocurrencies could be bought if money is required or if alternatives come up. Enterprise capital, against this, is supposed to be patient capital.
Fundrise already gives quarterly liquidity for the Innovation Fund, which is comparatively beneficiant by enterprise requirements. However offering that liquidity comes at a value, one I didn’t absolutely respect at first till I spoke to Ben Miller, CEO of Fundrise.
To satisfy quarterly redemption requests, roughly as much as 30% of the Innovation Fund has been allotted to liquid, lower-risk belongings comparable to cash market funds and company bonds. These belongings present stability and liquidity, however additionally they dilute returns throughout sturdy markets.
For instance, in 2025, the Innovation Fund returned about 43.5%, pushed largely by distinctive efficiency from core holdings like OpenAI, Anthropic, Anduril, and Databricks. In the meantime, cash market funds averaged roughly 4% and company bonds about 6%.
When 30% of a fund is incomes a blended return nearer to five%, that acts as a significant drag throughout bull markets, very similar to holding extra money in a quickly rising portfolio. Throughout sturdy markets, there was little redemption strain anyway, as traders wished to remain invested and often add more.
An NYSE Itemizing Provides Liquidity And A Potential Enhance In Efficiency
That is the place the potential NYSE itemizing turns into fascinating.
If the Innovation Fund had been publicly listed, the necessity to maintain such a big proportion in low-return liquid belongings may very well be considerably lowered. Liquidity would come from the market itself, not the fund’s steadiness sheet.
Primarily based on easy again of the envelope math, if that 30% beforehand held in low-risk belongings had been as an alternative invested alongside the remainder of the portfolio, total returns would have been near 60%, as an alternative of 43.5%. In different phrases, the 30% of the fund incomes a low-risk 5% dragged down efficiency by 13.5%. That could be a important price to supply liquidity to shareholders who largely did not want liquidity throughout a bull market.
After all, markets don’t transfer in straight traces. Corrections and bear markets are inevitable, particularly in extremely valued progress sectors like synthetic intelligence. When costs fall, traders are inclined to observe the herd, shopping for close to peaks and promoting close to troughs.
In a extreme AI correction, a privately held fund providing quarterly liquidity might face redemption strain it can not instantly meet. That might doubtless require gating withdrawals, which creates frustration and operational complexity.
A publicly listed fund handles this dynamic in a different way. During times of intense promoting, the share value merely adjusts to mirror provide and demand. Buyers should then resolve whether or not promoting at depressed costs is smart, or whether or not staying invested aligns higher with their long-term perception within the underlying corporations.
Higher Credentials for Doubtlessly Higher Investments
Fundrise has been round for roughly 14 years and now manages over $3 billion in belongings. Whereas business actual property has confronted headwinds for the reason that Federal Reserve raised charges aggressively beginning in 2022, these challenges are largely cyclical and asset-class particular relatively than reputational or operational. I am hopeful CRE has turned the corner.
Itemizing the Innovation Fund on the NYSE would additional improve Fundrise’s credibility and model. Getting listed is just not trivial. It requires intensive vetting by legal professionals, bankers, auditors, and regulators. All this requires money and time.
In some methods, it’s like getting right into a top-ranked college. It indicators a better stage of scrutiny, transparency, institutional acceptance, and total customary. Because of this, traders might really feel extra assured concerning the Innovation Fund, no more cautious. With higher confidence comes higher capital, and thereby extra funding alternatives.
After all, public listings don’t assure success. Poorly managed public funds nonetheless exist. However on steadiness, a NYSE itemizing sends a optimistic sign that Fundrise is severe, sturdy, and right here for the long run.
For startups searching for capital, repute issues. Founders consider traders not simply on capital, however on monitor document, community, and skill to assist companies develop. In actual fact, one can argue that capital is a commodity as a result of there’s a lot capital sloshing round.
Fundrise Supplies Extra Than Simply Capital
With over 380,000 traders and a couple of million publication subscribers, Fundrise has a distribution benefit that few conventional enterprise companies can match. Portfolio corporations achieve visibility, potential prospects, and credibility just by being related to the platform.
I’ve mentioned this earlier than with Ben Miller, Fundrise’s founder and CEO, together with how partnerships just like the one with Ramp helped drive significant adoption by cross-promotion. Ramp (Innovation Fund holding) talked about to Ben it was probably the most profitable campaigns they’d run. Now Ramp has zoomed forward of BREX, its closest competitor that began two years earlier, and was lately bought to Capital One.
As an Innovation Fund investor, I clearly need the portfolio corporations to succeed. I’m one instance of an investor who can assist amplify consciousness, and there are numerous others who can as effectively throughout the platform.
Evaluate that with conventional enterprise companies like Sequoia. They’ve elite reputations and distinctive companions, however entry is proscribed to establishments, insiders, and a small circle of founders. Additionally they can not immediately attain lots of of 1000’s of engaged retail traders the best way Fundrise can.
Fundrise can also be a personal firm operator itself, utilizing and testing merchandise from its personal portfolio. For startups evaluating potential traders, that mixture of capital, platform, and operational perception is compelling.
Itemizing on the NYSE additional legitimizes that proposition.
Right here’s my podcast episode the place I talk about the accelerating adoption of AI and the Ramp partnership with Ben Miller, CEO of Fundrise.
The X-Issue: Premium or Low cost to Internet Asset Worth (NAV)
Earlier than going additional, it’s value clarifying what internet asset worth, or NAV, really means on this context.
NAV represents the per-share worth of the fund’s underlying belongings minus liabilities. In easy phrases, it’s the estimated worth of all the businesses and belongings the Innovation Fund owns, divided by the variety of shares excellent. When a fund is non-public, traders usually transact at or very near NAV.
As soon as a fund is publicly listed, nonetheless, a second pressure comes into play: market provide and demand for the fund’s shares.
Whereas NAV continues to be pushed by the efficiency and valuation of the underlying portfolio corporations, the buying and selling value of the fund can transfer above or beneath NAV relying on investor sentiment, liquidity preferences, and shortage. This distinction exhibits up as a premium or low cost to NAV.
Traditionally, many closed-end funds, particularly these invested in illiquid belongings like actual property, have traded at reductions to NAV, usually within the 5% to twenty% vary. The explanations are often sensible relatively than dramatic, starting from liquidity preferences and valuation uncertainty to skepticism about administration or the inconvenience of proudly owning a fund as an alternative of the belongings themselves.
That mentioned, shortage can flip the equation.
If demand for publicity to a selected set of personal corporations far exceeds the obtainable float of shares, the fund’s market value can commerce meaningfully above NAV. In these circumstances, value actions are pushed much less by adjustments within the underlying firm valuations and extra by provide / demand imbalances within the public market.
This dynamic already exists in pockets of the market. Some publicly traded automobiles with concentrated publicity to hard-to-access non-public corporations have traded at sustained premiums, generally effectively above the worth of their underlying holdings.
For the Innovation Fund, this creates a further variable for traders. Returns would now not be pushed solely by how effectively the portfolio corporations carry out, but additionally by how the market costs entry to these corporations at a given second in time.
In different phrases, the worth of the underlying belongings nonetheless determines NAV, however the market’s urge for food for publicity determines whether or not traders should purchase or promote shares at a reduction or premium to that NAV. The tougher to realize entry to the portfolio corporations, probably, the upper the premium to NAV.
As a long-term investor, I assume the fund will commerce roughly round NAV, presumably at a modest low cost. However as a result of the Innovation Fund owns scarce non-public belongings and will have restricted public float (8% or much less), there’s additionally a believable state of affairs the place demand drives the share value to a premium, a minimum of for intervals of time.
That extra layer of provide and demand cuts each methods. It introduces volatility, however it additionally creates upside optionality that doesn’t exist in a purely non-public construction.
Instance Of A Closed-end Fund Buying and selling At A Premium To NAV: DXYZ
There’s clear precedent for publicly traded funds buying and selling at premiums to NAV. One notable instance is DXYZ, or the Future Tech100 Inc. fund, which has traded at anyplace from a 200% to 350% premium to its internet asset worth. Again in November 2025, the fund’s NAV was roughly $7 per share, and it’s doubtless increased at this time.
SpaceX accounts for about half of DXYZ’s holdings, which gives a powerful indication of simply how a lot demand there’s for hard-to-access SpaceX publicity. Buyers are successfully paying a considerable premium for comfort, shortage, and perceived long-term optionality.
As a savvy investor, it’s cheap to take a look at DXYZ and ask whether or not one thing related might occur if the Innovation Fund had been to grow to be publicly traded. Primarily based on a CNBC snapshot from 3Q2025, Databricks, OpenAI, and Anthropic collectively made up roughly 50% of the Innovation Fund’s portfolio. The remaining portion consisted of different high-quality non-public corporations comparable to Canva, Anduril, Ramp, and, I imagine, SpaceX as effectively.
One might argue that the Innovation Fund gives a extra diversified combine of personal progress corporations with much less focus danger than DXYZ. If that’s the case, it’s not unreasonable to think about a state of affairs the place the Innovation Fund might commerce at a significant premium as effectively, particularly given how troublesome it’s for many traders to realize publicity to those corporations straight.
NAV Might Additionally Decline As Properly
That mentioned, premiums to NAV are usually not assured and could be unstable. Investor sentiment can shift shortly, significantly throughout market corrections or intervals of rising rates of interest. Premiums can compress simply as quick as they broaden, even when the underlying corporations proceed to carry out effectively.
As well as, a extra diversified portfolio might cut back focus danger however may dilute the shortage impact that drives excessive premiums. Not like DXYZ, the place SpaceX dominates the narrative, the Innovation Fund’s broader publicity could lead on the market to worth it extra conservatively.
All the non-public corporations held within the Innovation Fund stay scarce and troublesome to entry, even for well-connected traders. In the meantime, ServiceTitan, now publicly traded below the ticker TTAN, represents lower than 2% of the fund (not 15% as proven within the graphic), reinforcing that the portfolio stays targeted on non-public progress alternatives relatively than public market publicity.
Taken collectively, a premium is believable, however it needs to be considered as elective upside relatively than a base-case assumption. For long-term traders, the first driver of returns ought to nonetheless be the efficiency of the underlying corporations, with any premium to NAV handled as a bonus relatively than a assure.
Let’s Make A Sensible Assumption Of NAV Potential For VCX
Let’s assume there’s a 50% probability the fund trades at a ten% low cost to NAV, a 20% probability it trades at par, and a 30% probability it trades at a 50% premium (not 200% – 350% premium like DXYZ, which I would not purchase). Below these assumptions, the anticipated worth of a $100,000 funding made earlier than itemizing could be about $110,000.
Even with a better likelihood of buying and selling at a reduction, that type of uneven payoff remains to be the kind of danger I’m snug taking as a long-term investor. It’s best to play with the assumptions your self to determine a number of lifelike situations.
Personally, I don’t plan to promote for a minimum of one other 5 years, and ideally ten. My purpose is to speculate till my youngsters graduate school in about 16 years to hedge towards a probably bleak labor market because of AI. Time and compounding are on my aspect.
Given the tax implications of promoting, I would want a big premium to NAV to be tempted. If I imagine the fund can compound at 20% yearly for 5 years, that’s roughly a 150% achieve simply by holding.
In that case, promoting solely is smart at a big premium and with confidence I might redeploy the after-tax proceeds simply as successfully. In any other case, like many rich traders, I’d relatively borrow against assets than sell them and pay taxes.
If the fund had been to commerce at an excessive premium, say 100% above NAV after the 6-month lockup, I’d promote 25% of my place to lock in good points and let the remaining 75% journey. That might be a miraculous ~$700,000 appreciation on my ~$700,000 complete place simply by an inventory. Taking some income balances prudence with long-term conviction.
And if VCX trades at a reduction to NAV, I am going to simply maintain like initially deliberate with the expectation the low cost will slim as visibility of VCX improves.
Constructing Transparency, Liquidity, and a Model
Having constructed Monetary Samurai since 2009, I perceive how troublesome it’s to develop a enterprise and a model. Generally momentum builds shortly. Different instances you get dragged by the mud and endure. That volatility is just a part of constructing one thing significant.
Fundrise’s try and listing the Innovation Fund on the NYSE represents a step towards higher transparency, liquidity, and model sturdiness. It might additionally enhance entry to higher-quality offers over time, which is the primary purpose for each Fundrise and its traders.
The payment construction stays enticing. Having the ability to spend money on non-public progress corporations of this high quality with out paying a 20% carry is uncommon. One closed-end enterprise fund I spend money on expenses 3% administration charges and 35% of income. By comparability, Fundrise’s new 2.5% payment with no carry is compelling.
The primary problem for traders, myself included, will likely be staying disciplined. Larger liquidity makes it simpler to promote throughout downturns and to justify poor timing selections with convincing narratives. I could make each a bull and bear case for nearly any place I maintain, having educated myself to take a look at either side in an effort to keep away from being blindsided.
And there will likely be a correction in AI non-public corporations in some unspecified time in the future. The true check will likely be whether or not traders can maintain by volatility and even buy the dip in the event that they imagine, as I do, that AI is a minimum of a decade-long pattern.
Investing In AI For The Lengthy-Time period
General, I’m excited to see what occurs with the vote to listing. With a minimal funding quantity of solely $10, gaining publicity to the Innovation Fund is simple. If the itemizing doesn’t materialize, I’m snug with the established order. And if Fundrise launches new funds investing in promising non-public progress corporations, I’ll be keen to guage these alternatives as effectively.
Readers, what do you concentrate on the Innovation Fund probably itemizing on the NYSE? Do you count on it to commerce at a premium or a reduction to NAV over time? And would you take into account investing earlier than an inventory to probably profit from any NAV growth pushed by provide and demand?
Fundrise has been a long-time sponsor of Monetary Samurai, and I’m additionally an investor in Fundrise merchandise. I’ve spoken with and met Ben Miller, Fundrise’s co-founder and CEO, many instances over time, and our long-term funding philosophies are carefully aligned.
As with all danger belongings, there aren’t any ensures. Please make investments solely what you’ll be able to afford to lose and guarantee your total asset allocation lets you keep disciplined by market cycles.
