Stripe, a payments start-up, is one of the most successful companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in a generation. Last year, it hit a valuation of $65 billion. But in the 15 years since it was founded, there has not been a way for most individuals to invest in it.
It is a problem that has vexed retail investors for years, as start-ups like Stripe, SpaceX and OpenAI soar to enormous valuations in the private market. Only so-called accredited investors with a high net worth are allowed to invest in private tech start-ups. By the time the companies go public a decade or more after they started, their growth has often slowed and their valuations are high.
A new fund, Destiny Tech100, is trying to change that with a novel solution. It is offering a publicly traded fund that contains shares of 23 private tech companies including Stripe, SpaceX, OpenAI, Discord and Epic Games. The fund, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last week, plans to expand its holdings to include stock in 100 start-ups.
Sohail Prasad, the chief executive of Destiny XYZ, the parent company of the fund, said his goal was to let anyone own part of the tech industry’s top private companies.
“We have tens of thousands of individual investors that are now shareholders in these companies,” he said.