(Bloomberg) — Shares of the Fundrise Innovation Fund fell sharply for a second straight day Friday, though remain well above the underlying value of its holdings in private tech firms including the potentially IPO-bound SpaceX and Anthropic PBC.
The closed-end fund sank 34% to $173 in New York, extending the prior day’s 31% slump. The pullback capped a wild week of trading since shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange on March 19.
Gains in each of its first five sessions saw the stock price explode to as high as $575 on Wednesday, or about 3,000% above its estimated net asset value per share of $18.97. The past two days’ reversal, which coincided with a short call from Citron Research, was almost as spectacular.
Read: Fund With Stakes in Anthropic, SpaceX Plunges After Short Report
A representative for Fundrise didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yet with a current market value of slightly more than $6 billion versus net assets in the fund of $679 million, investors are still paying up for the shares at prices equivalent to more than nine times the combined value of its private company holdings based on their last funding rounds.
This hefty and some say unsustainable premium is not solely due to a rush by small investors to get a slice of the hottest private tech companies. It also reflects a trading squeeze created by provisions that restrict most of Fundrise Innovation’s 100,000-plus investors from selling in the first six months after the listing are another factor.
The fund is just one of a proliferating number of public investment options for investors that want to secure a liquid exposure to companies such as SpaceX, Anthropic PBC, OpenAI and Anduril.
SpaceX is readying to file for a potential $75 billion initial public offering in the coming days, Anthropic is eyeing a potential debut raising as much as $60 billion as soon as October and OpenAI is also mulling a plan to list as early as this year, Bloomberg and other media outlets have reported.
Challenge for Small Investors
Getting stakes in these private companies well before they go public or stay private for longer has long been a challenge for small investors given their funding rounds are typically confined to large investment firms able to write big checks or that require access to special purpose vehicles.
Alongside Fundrise Innovation’s gains earlier in the week, investors pushed up the share prices of other closed-end funds styling themselves as publicly listed venture capital funds. After trading below its $25 IPO price for most of the time since its early March IPO, Robinhood Ventures Fund I jumped to a high of $35 on Wednesday before easing back to $28.61 Friday.
Though less extreme than Fundrise Innovation, Destiny Tech100 Inc., a venture-focused closed-end fund whose largest holding is in SpaceX, sparked a frenzy of its own when it debuted in 2024. Its shares now trade at $28.03, down nearly three quarters from their peak.
“Trading at a massive premium and then seeing the premium quickly collapse is not unique to Fundrise Innovation, as we saw the same pattern occur with Destiny Tech100,” said Jack Shannon, equity strategies principal at Morningstar Inc.
Fundrise Innovation holds 20.7% of its assets in shares of Anthropic PBC and 5% in SpaceX, and also has holdings in Databricks, OpenAI, Anduril and Ramp.
“Investors need to understand the holdings, the stated value of those holdings, and whether the market value of the vehicle remains grounded in that reality,” said Mark Klein, the chief executive of Suro Capital Corp., a business development company with investments in OpenAI.
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