YieldStreet

Market position

Described as a leading and best-known platform for private markets investing for individual investors, with more than 500,000 members and over $6 billion in cumulative investments through the platform as of 2025. It competes with Fundrise, CrowdStreet, Percent and RealtyMogul; relative to Fundrise, which concentrates on real estate with minimums as low as $10, the company offers a broader set of asset classes but generally higher minimums and accredited-investor requirements for most offerings.

Breadth of asset classes — ten categories spanning real estate, private credit, private equity, art, legal finance and marine finance — combined with in-house sourcing and diligence, access to funds managed by established global institutions, and a choice between self-directed single deals, evergreen funds and an automated managed portfolio.

Technology

The company operates an online investing platform through which members browse, subscribe to and track alternative investment offerings, receive investor updates and access performance reporting. Willow 360 adds an automated allocation engine that recommends and manages a diversified private markets portfolio. The platform also maintained a wallet product tied to third-party banking-as-a-service infrastructure.

Go-to-market

Direct-to-consumer online acquisition of self-directed investors, supported by consumer advertising (including the "Invest like the 1%" tagline) and extensive investor-education content such as articles, blog posts and infographics. The company has also built distribution through partnerships with institutional asset managers including Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs and StepStone Group, announced in December 2025, to offer private credit funds at $10,000 minimums.

Individual investors seeking exposure beyond public stocks and bonds, primarily accredited investors, with selected products such as the Alternative Income Fund open to non-accredited retail investors. Marketing has emphasized giving retail investors access to deals previously limited to institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

Geography

Headquartered in New York City, with additional offices reported in Brazil, Greece and Malta; job postings list roles in New York, Athens (Greece) and Birkirkara (Malta). The company stated in 2021 that it planned to expand into Europe and Asia.

History

Sources date the founding to 2015 under the Yieldstreet name. Edison Partners led a $62 million investment in February 2019, at which point more than $600 million had been invested on the platform by over 100,000 members. In April 2019 the company acquired Athena Art Finance from The Carlyle Group for $170 million, entering art-secured lending, and later that year acquired WealthFlex to add self-directed IRA capabilities. The Alternative Income Fund launched in March 2020 and an Art Equity Platform followed in November 2021. A $100 million Series C led by Mitch Caplan of Tarsadia Investments closed in June 2021, when management said it was weighing a SPAC listing. The company agreed to acquire Cadre in November 2023 (completed January 2024) and in November 2024 was reported to be seeking $75-$100 million in new funding while weighing a sale. It closed a $77 million round led by Tarsadia in July 2025, launched Willow 360 in August 2025, and rebranded to Willow Wealth in late 2025. Mitch Caplan is listed as CEO and Ted Yarbrough as CIO.

Risks & controversies

Several marine finance and real estate offerings have generated investor losses; CNBC reported in 2025 that cumulative losses across multiple offerings approached $208 million, comprising roughly $89 million in marine loans and $167 million in real estate. A CNBC review of investor letters covering 30 real estate projects found investors had put in more than $370 million, with $78 million of defaults recognized in the prior year, four deals declared total losses and 23 placed on a watchlist; the company attributed the outcome to rising interest rates and market conditions affecting 2021 and 2022 real estate equity offerings, and its real estate return rate fell from 9.4% in 2023 to 2%. The company also shut down a real estate investment trust composed of six projects as its value fell by nearly half, locking up investor money for at least two years. In 2020 a marine portfolio tied to vessel deconstruction loans defaulted and the company won a $77 million U.K. court judgment against the Lakhani family over allegedly fraudulent marine finance loan statements. In September 2023 the SEC brought charges over a ship-backed investment, settled for approximately $1.9 million without admission of findings, and a class action was settled for up to roughly $6.2 million (reported elsewhere as $9 million, October 2024). The 2024 failure of banking-as-a-service provider Synapse froze an estimated $160 million in customer funds across platforms, including accounts associated with the company's wallet product. CNBC noted that a decade of historical performance data was removed from the website at the time of the Willow Wealth rebrand.