Arizona Tribune - New Ideas from Wall Street Offer Opportunities to Invest in Future Unicorns

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL / ACCESS Newswire / March 26, 2026 / Many Private companies stay private for years. Recently, several new ideas have emerged from Wall Street that provide everyday investors with a chance to profit from investing in coveted private companies. The goal of all of these programs is to offer investors a chance at pre-IPO valuations of future successful companies who may someday achieve unicorn status. However, the costs associated with the alternatives can vary widely. For example, in 2025 EquiDeFi launched a new platform for private investing that encourages companies to directly solicit investment from individual retail investors.

We caught up with EquiDeFi's founders in early 2026. We asked how does your approach differ from others trying to attract private investment. "We created a compliance platform to give control over capital raising and valuations back to the companies directly" said the company's representatives. The founders explained that others are offering closed-end funds that acquire already appreciated portfolios of private companies that are assembled by an asset manager who imposes commissions, annual fees and performance fees. "Our thesis is that if investors were given a chance to pick their own private company before the run up, they would invest directly more often. A software platform helps issuers navigate compliance when investing interest is from several thousand investors. This helps the investors as well by avoidance of sales charges, commissions, annual fees and performance fees imposed by many closed-end funds" explained EquiDeFi.

During 2025 EquiDeFi boasted of having launched over $1 billion in new private offerings that attracted over 60,000 indications of interest. With their nominal onboarding fee of $10,000 and background checking, payment processing and suitability checks baked in it is hard to imagine a more cost-effective way for issuers, and with no costs levied on investors an investor can build their own portfolio by selecting companies using the platform. Sectors already conducting their offerings include media giants, social media, health and data although EquiDeFi is actively seeking to sign more and is in discussions with companies as diverse as predictive markets, drones and professional sports. EquiDeFi notes that any of its direct offerings could be a future unicorn or a company itself sold privately to a closed-end fund looking for new portfolio investments.

Direct investing in private offerings is a complex orchestration of compliance, funding, suitability and documentation. For these reasons, opportunities have historically been offered primarily for institutional investment. However, private investing as a sector has gained the attention of several prominent investment banking firms, although access differs significantly. Several new closed-end funds now give investors a chance to profit from a portfolio of future potential unicorns while still private companies. Like EquiDeFi, companies included in closed-end funds are betting on an IPO or sale. Fund managers use their discretion to assemble a portfolio of companies, often later in their life cycle than the companies sold on EquiDeFi's platform. These managers are often chasing the next great sector such as datacenters, AI, space or blockchain, where investor interest is high but investing opportunity is largely unavailable. The funds sell their own shares to the public which trade giving investors a way to own a portfolio of coveted companies, but at prices that reflect the Net Asset Values (NAVs) or the fund's own investment cost (i.e., the acquisition price paid by the fund which could be extremely high and volatile and which is passed on to the investor).

We asked EquiDeFi to compare their approach to the approach followed by the new closed-end funds. In a nutshell, in a closed-end fund you rely on a fee-based asset manager to pick winners. "When these shares are acquired, either from management or existing employees or earlier investors, or by direct investing, the companies usually have already seen sector appreciation that can deprive the fund's investors of the opportunity to participate unlike EquiDeFi where the issuer itself determines the value at which it will offer its shares on the platform" management explained. This is a huge difference, says EquiDeFi - the investor gets to be their own money manager and sets the price at which they will fund the company's growth or development. It is not a secondary market where sentiment is often fueled by the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a mass scale. Added EquiDeFi "when investing directly there can be lack of diversification and liquidity which can be an advantage or also a disadvantage. It is wise to read all offering documents and understand the risks of direct private investing". There also has been significant media coverage regarding the risks of certain closed-end funds lending to AI and data centers, such as Blue Owl and Blackstone Credit. Several of these have even recently began to limit redemptions. It is likely the next generation of closed-end funds will not focus on private lending however, and therefore will not become subject to the same risk of portfolio defaults.

One new closed-end fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund I, started trading on NASDAQ under the symbol "RVI" on March 6, 2026. The fund's prospectus states their fund will primarily invest in a concentrated portfolio generally consisting of ten or more private companies that in the view of the asset manager are "best-in-class" growing companies at the frontiers of their respective sectors and industries. The adviser considers a "best-in-class" company to be a company within the fund's investable universe that has one or more competitive advantages relative to other companies in its sector.

Another newcomer, Buttonwood First Access Fund Ltd., recently announced it had filed a registration statement with the SEC for a closed-end fund to fulfill a singular mission: providing all investors, regardless of net worth, with a dedicated vehicle for entering the private markets. By focusing on disruptive technology, high-growth companies at the forefront of their industries, the fund aims to bridge the gap between traditional private placement investing and the ease of purchasing a public security.

Buttonwood makes the following additional claim with which the founders of EquiDeFi readily agree. Access for everyone is the standard sought for the future of private investing. Unlike traditional private equity funds that require "accredited" or "qualified purchaser" status, both Buttonwood and EquiDeFi seek to be accessible to the general public, removing the high barriers to entry that historically characterized private market investing that excluded the general public's participation.

EquiDeFi notes that it is considering its own fund to seed some of the more interesting companies launching offerings on the platform and will hold those investments for an indeterminate time and may even consider offering investments directly to closed-end funds in the future.

About EquiDeFi.

EquiDeFi helps issuers launch and manage private offerings with compliance-first infrastructure, investor onboarding workflows, document execution, payment integrations, and real-time offering visibility. Through software designed especially to satisfy compliance EquiDeFi offers workflow tools designed for Regulation D, Regulation A (Tier 2) and Regulation S offerings. Designed for companies, broker-dealers, law firms, family offices, and wealth managers, the EquiDeFi platform provides issuers with a centralized system to manage key operational components of private offerings, including investor onboarding, subscription workflows, document execution, compliance tracking, communications, and record retention, and offers investors a document vault and transfer agent services to retain records of investments.

EquiDeFi's platform is accessible via web browser and mobile devices at www.equidefi.com and provides integrated tools for:

• Presentation and distribution of offering materials, including offering circulars, investor decks, and subscription agreements

• Investor onboarding workflows with integrated KYC, KYB, AML, litigation, securities enforcement, media, identity, and politically exposed person screening

• Accredited investor verification and suitability review tools

• Automated preparation and execution of investor subscription agreements with integrated digital signatures

• Payment rail integrations, including ACH, wire transfer, stablecoin, and cryptocurrency funding options

• Issuer dashboards for real-time monitoring of offering progress, investment pipeline, and compliance status

• Investor communications, reminder emails, and status updates

• Data collection, real-time activity tracking, audit trail maintenance, and secure online document vault access

Companies exploring a private capital raise and looking for infrastructure to manage issuer workflows, investor onboarding, and offering operations can learn more at www.equidefi.com.

Media Contact
Jack Smith
Media Director
Trustpoint Xposure
[email protected]

SOURCE: Law Office of Harvey Kesner P.C. / EquiDeFi, Ltd.

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Ch.Campbell--AT