One of many causes I’ve been a long-time supporter and affiliate companion of Fundrise is its willingness to innovate. Since its founding in 2012, shortly after the JOBS Act opened non-public investments to retail buyers, Fundrise has persistently seemed for tactics to democratize entry to institutional-quality investments.
From launching diversified non-public actual property funds like its Heartland and Revenue funds, to increasing into enterprise capital by means of the Innovation Fund, Fundrise has steadily pushed into areas that have been as soon as reserved for giant establishments and ultra-high-net-worth people.
So after I acquired an electronic mail from Fundrise asserting its plans to listing the Innovation Fund on the New York Inventory Alternate, below the ticker VCX, I used to be intrigued.
I are typically old-school in relation to investing. If one thing isn’t damaged, I’m usually reluctant to vary 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 study extra and proceed to refine my views.
The Potential For Prompt Liquidity In Enterprise Capital
I’ve invested in conventional enterprise capital funds for over 15 years. That have has conditioned me to anticipate zero liquidity for a very long time. Once I allocate capital to enterprise, sometimes as much as about 20% of my investable belongings, I assume I received’t see that cash once more for at the least 10 years.
The opposite 80% of my portfolio gives liquidity. Shares, bonds, and even cryptocurrencies may be bought if money is required or if alternatives come up. Enterprise capital, against this, is supposed to be affected person 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 totally admire at first till I spoke to Ben Miller, CEO of Fundrise.
To fulfill quarterly redemption requests, roughly as much as 30% of the Innovation Fund has been allotted to liquid, lower-risk belongings resembling cash market funds and company bonds. These belongings present stability and liquidity, however in addition 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 stress anyway, as buyers wished to remain invested and typically add extra.
An NYSE Itemizing Provides Liquidity And A Potential Increase In Efficiency
That is the place the potential NYSE itemizing turns into fascinating.
If the Innovation Fund have been publicly listed, the necessity to maintain such a big share in low-return liquid belongings may very well be considerably decreased. 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 have 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 may be a vital 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 development sectors like synthetic intelligence. When costs fall, buyers are likely to comply with 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 stress it can not instantly meet. That will doubtless require gating withdrawals, which creates frustration and operational complexity.
A publicly listed fund handles this dynamic otherwise. During times of intense promoting, the share worth merely adjusts to mirror provide and demand. Buyers should then determine whether or not promoting at depressed costs is sensible, or whether or not staying invested aligns higher with their long-term perception within the underlying corporations.
Higher Credentials for Probably Higher Investments
Fundrise has been round for roughly 14 years and now manages over $3 billion in belongings. Whereas industrial 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 slightly than reputational or operational. I am hopeful CRE has turned the nook.
Itemizing the Innovation Fund on the NYSE would additional improve Fundrise’s credibility and model. Getting listed will not be trivial. It requires in depth 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 alerts a better stage of scrutiny, transparency, institutional acceptance, and total commonplace. Consequently, buyers might really feel extra assured in regards to the Innovation Fund, no more cautious. With better confidence comes better 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 constructive sign that Fundrise is critical, sturdy, and right here for the long run.
For startups searching for capital, popularity issues. Founders consider buyers not simply on capital, however on monitor file, community, and skill to assist companies develop. In truth, one can argue that capital is a commodity as a result of there’s a lot capital sloshing round.
Fundrise Offers Extra Than Simply Capital
With over 380,000 buyers, Fundrise has a distribution benefit that few conventional enterprise companies can match. Portfolio corporations achieve visibility, potential clients, 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 means of cross-promotion. Ramp (Innovation Fund holding) talked about to Ben it was some of the profitable campaigns that they had run. Now Ramp has zoomed forward of BREX, its closest competitor that began two years earlier, and was just 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 will help amplify consciousness, and there are numerous others who can as nicely throughout the platform.
Examine 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 tons of of hundreds of engaged retail buyers 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 buyers, 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 focus on 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 price 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, buyers sometimes transact at or very near NAV.
As soon as a fund is publicly listed, nevertheless, 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 worth of the fund can transfer above or under NAV relying on investor sentiment, liquidity preferences, and shortage. This distinction reveals up as a premium or low cost to NAV.
Traditionally, many closed-end funds, particularly these invested in illiquid belongings like actual property that’s harder to promote, have traded at reductions to NAV, typically within the 5% to 10% vary. The explanations are often sensible slightly 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 specific set of personal corporations far exceeds the obtainable float of shares, the fund’s market worth can commerce meaningfully above NAV. In these circumstances, worth 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 nicely above the worth of their underlying holdings.
For the Innovation Fund, this creates an extra variable for buyers. Returns would now not be pushed solely by how nicely the portfolio corporations carry out, but in addition 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 buyers should buy or promote shares at a reduction or premium to that NAV. The tougher to achieve 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 situation the place demand drives the share worth to a premium, at the least for durations of time.
That further layer of provide and demand cuts each methods. It introduces volatility, but it surely 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 greater at present.
SpaceX accounts for roughly half of DXYZ’s holdings, which gives a robust 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 have been to change into 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 resembling Canva, Anduril, Ramp, and, I consider, SpaceX as nicely.
One might argue that the Innovation Fund gives a extra diversified combine of personal development corporations with much less focus threat than DXYZ. If that’s the case, it’s not unreasonable to think about a situation the place the Innovation Fund might commerce at a significant premium as nicely, particularly given how troublesome it’s for many buyers to achieve publicity to those corporations straight.
NAV May Additionally Decline As Effectively
That mentioned, premiums to NAV are usually not assured and may be unstable. Investor sentiment can shift rapidly, notably throughout market corrections or durations of rising rates of interest. Premiums can compress simply as quick as they increase, even when the underlying corporations proceed to carry out nicely.
As well as, a extra diversified portfolio might scale back focus threat however may also dilute the shortage impact that drives excessive premiums. In contrast to DXYZ, the place SpaceX dominates the narrative, the Innovation Fund’s broader publicity may lead 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 buyers. 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 development alternatives slightly than public market publicity.
Taken collectively, a premium is believable, but it surely needs to be considered as non-obligatory upside slightly than a base-case assumption. For long-term buyers, the first driver of returns ought to nonetheless be the efficiency of the underlying corporations, with any premium to NAV handled as a bonus slightly than a assure.
Let’s Make A Sensible Assumption Of NAV Potential For VCX
Let’s assume there’s a 50% likelihood the fund trades at a ten% low cost to NAV, a 20% likelihood it trades at par, and a 30% likelihood it trades at a 50% premium (not 200% – 350% premium like DXYZ, which I would not purchase). Underneath these assumptions, the anticipated worth of a $100,000 funding made earlier than itemizing can 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 threat I’m snug taking as a long-term investor. It’s best to play with the assumptions your self to determine a number of real looking situations.
Personally, I don’t plan to promote for at the least one other 5 years, and ideally ten. My aim is to take a position till my children graduate faculty in about 16 years to hedge in opposition to a probably bleak labor market because of AI. Time and compounding are on my facet.m so the 6-month lockup publish a profitable VCX itemizing will not be a priority.
Given the tax implications of promoting, I would wish a big premium to NAV to be tempted. If I consider 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 sensible at a big premium and with confidence I might redeploy the after-tax proceeds simply as successfully. In any other case, like many rich buyers, I’d slightly borrow in opposition to belongings than promote them and pay taxes.
If the fund have 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 features and let the remaining 75% journey. That will be a miraculous ~$700,000 appreciation on my ~$700,000 complete place simply by means of an inventory. Taking some earnings 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. Typically momentum builds rapidly. Different instances you get dragged by means of the mud and undergo. That volatility is solely a part of constructing one thing significant.
Fundrise’s try to listing the Innovation Fund on the NYSE represents a step towards better transparency, liquidity, and model sturdiness. It might additionally enhance entry to higher-quality offers over time, which is the primary aim for each Fundrise and its buyers.
The payment construction stays engaging. With the ability to put money into non-public development corporations of this high quality with out paying a 20% carry is uncommon. One closed-end enterprise fund I put money into fees 3% administration charges and 35% of earnings. By comparability, Fundrise’s new 2.5% payment with no carry is compelling.
The primary problem for buyers, myself included, shall be staying disciplined. Better 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 skilled myself to take a look at either side in an effort to keep away from being blindsided.
And there shall be a correction in AI non-public corporations sooner or later. The actual take a look at shall be whether or not buyers can maintain by means of volatility and even purchase the dip in the event that they consider, as I do, that AI is at the least a decade-long pattern.
Investing In AI For The Lengthy-Time period
Total, 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 straightforward. If the itemizing doesn’t materialize, I’m snug with the established order. And if Fundrise launches new funds investing in promising non-public development corporations, I’ll be keen to guage these alternatives as nicely.
Readers, what do you consider the Innovation Fund probably itemizing on the NYSE? Do you anticipate 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 threat belongings, there aren’t any ensures. Please make investments solely what you may afford to lose and guarantee your total asset allocation means that you can keep disciplined by means of market cycles.
