There may be no better time to launch a 40 Act interval fund focused on buying shares of VC-backed mega-unicorns like Anthropic, Databricks and OpenAI.

Small family offices and high-net-worth individuals find it challenging to access brand-name VC firms that have the most exposure to these companies. Plus, investing in a traditional closed-end VC fund means your capital is going to be locked up for a decade or more, which can be a turnoff.

What if you could get exposure to a hot AI company and be able to get quarterly liquidity if you desire? That’s what ABS Global Investments is pitching to wealth managers with the Pre-IPO and Growth Fund, which currently holds shares in 16 pre-IPO companies. The portfolio includes stakes in Anthropic, Canva, Cerebras, Databricks, Glean, OpenAI, OpenEvidence, Revolut, Rippling and a combination of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI. Its top three holdings as of February 28 were Cerebras (15.67 percent), Databricks (7.11 percent) and SpaceX and xAI (5.67 percent), according to the ABS website.

The fund launched on January 23 with shares priced at $10 each. As of March 4, the shares were valued at $11.73 each, a 17 percent increase in less than six weeks.

The $11 billion AUM investment management firm believes the time is ripe for the new fund. “This launch comes at a time when private late-stage growth companies have expanded rapidly, with more than 1,400 global unicorns collectively valued at approximately $5 trillion,” ABS said in a statement. “Over the last decade, the number of companies achieving unicorn status has grown more than twentyfold, underscoring the shift in value creation from public to private markets.”

And with the volatility of public markets and uncertainty caused by tariffs and war, putting a chunk of your wealth into private company shares may feel less risky than it once did.

Where it started

The ABS fund isn’t the first interval fund focused on buying shares of private companies. Liberty Street Funds was the first mover, launching the Private Shares Fund in 2014. That vehicle had assets of $1.1 billion as of year-end 2025 in 78 positions, including SpaceX (13.68 percent), GrubMarket (6.45 percent) and Nanotronics Imaging (4.06 percent), according to its fact sheet.

Another competitor is the ARK Venture Fund, which launched in 2022 and had net assets of around $491 million at the end of last year. Its top three holdings at year-end were SpaceX (12.26 percent), xAI (7.25 percent) and Figure AI (4.87 percent), according to its fact sheet.

The ABS, ARK and Liberty Street funds all offer their investors quarterly redemptions of up to 5 percent of the net asset value of the fund.

ARK charges a management fee of 2.75 percent, while ABS charges 1.95 percent and Liberty Street charges 1.9 percent. All are open to non-accredited investors, with a minimum investment of $500 for ARK, $2,500 for Liberty Street and $10,000 for ABS.

All of these interval funds are part of the broader trend of democratizing private markets, which have largely been funded by big institutional investors. As the capital demands grow – and some LPs pull back due to lack of liquidity or other reasons – asset managers are seeking new sources of capital.

Enter investable private wealth, which is expected to exceed $481 trillion worldwide by 2030, according to PwC’s 2025 Global Asset and Wealth Management Report. It notes that the growth will be driven largely by high-net-worth individuals, generally understood to be people with $1 million or more in investable assets, and mass-affluent individuals, people with investable assets of less than $1 million.

The push to democratize private markets has led to a surge in interval funds that tap into private wealth. Nearly 160 interval funds managed assets of $145.9 billion as of September 30, according to research by investment management firm XA Investments.

Much of the growth in interval funds has been driven by private credit offerings, which the market has recently soured on, but PE- and VC-focused vehicles also account for a meaningful share of interval funds. In a recent white paper, financial advisory firm Houlihan Capital notes that PE and VC represent more than 25 percent of interval fund managed assets, behind private credit (at around 40 percent) and ahead of real estate and hedge fund strategies.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see large, brand-name venture firms launch their own interval funds to tap into retail capital. As the industry matures, it is bifurcating into traditional boutique funds on one end (think Benchmark and Union Square Ventures) and large venture asset managers on the other end (think Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz). As large firms grow, so will their appetite for new investable capital. Maybe we’ll see venture firms start to chase retail investors like their private equity brethren.

One industry source said it was unlikely that VC firms would mimic what larger asset managers are doing with interval funds. “It’s a different business and different from what they do on a daily basis. I don’t think they would want to re-organize to be able to manage registered funds, balance liquidity and duration and manage a public markets book.”

It is worth noting that Sequoia is already well positioned. It is a registered investment adviser and moved to an evergreen fund structure in 2022, which gives it a permanent capital pool that is replenished by reinvesting proceeds from exits. The structure also allows Sequoia to hold public equities indefinitely. The only thing missing is regular redemption windows like the ones that interval funds offer on a quarterly basis.

To be clear, neither Sequoia, Andreessen or any other large venture firm has said it is interested in pursuing interval funds. But it sure wouldn’t be a surprising development as the industry continues to mature.