#646
The Death of the Bucket
Published:
Jun 13, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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For decades, institutional investing has been organized around a simple idea: put stocks in one bucket, bonds in another, private equity somewhere else, and let diversification do the rest. It became the dominant framework for pensions, endowments, insurers, and sovereign wealth funds managing trillions of dollars. But what if the buckets themselves have stopped making sense?
That is the question sitting behind one of the most consequential ventures in modern asset management. CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the United States, is rethinking how it allocates more than $600b dollars. Rather than treating asset classes as distinct silos, it is shifting toward a total portfolio approach that asks a different question entirely: where is risk best deployed, regardless of label?
The timing of this shift is not accidental. Public and private markets are increasingly intertwined. Credit behaves more like equity. Infrastructure resembles real estate. Private capital firms are buying insurers, lenders, and wealth managers. Meanwhile, technology is making capital more portable and information more abundant. The neat categories that once defined finance are starting to blur.
This shift feels familiar. Fintech spent the last decade dismantling the boundaries between banking, payments, lending, and software. Now the same phenomenon is reaching institutional investing. The future may belong less to those who can pick the right asset class and more to those who can navigate across all of them. Whether that proves visionary or mistaken, the rest of the industry is about to find out.
Portfolio News
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CoinCover partners with Crossmint to bring enterprise-grade account recovery to smart wallets - The partnership will integrate CoinCover’s Recover product as a module for the Crossmint platform, giving Crossmint customers, including neobanks, FinTechs and digital asset platforms, an enhanced route to recovery for their smart wallets. Read more
Flutterwave unveils vision for Africa’s financial operating system - Speaking at Money 20/20 Europe in Amsterdam, Agboola emphasised that stablecoins are not a standalone product, but a faster settlement layer built directly on Flutterwave’s existing global payout network. He explained that for enterprises managing treasury across multiple African markets, stablecoins serve as a liquidity and FX management tool that continues to function even when traditional banking rails are closed. Read more
Octus signs definitive agreement to acquire LevPro - Adding LevPro to Octus’ industry leading end-to-end platform unifies credit intelligence, research and portfolio management for CLO and private credit managers at every stage of growth. Read more
The Death of the Bucket
A $600b experiment kicks off at CalPERS pension fund - Gilmore is implementing the total portfolio approach, a strategy that involves collaboration across the portfolio management team to optimize the whole portfolio rather than individual asset classes, which he used successfully in New Zealand. Read more
Industry News
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US stock market to stop shrinking for first time in 23 years - US markets are close to ending more than two decades of declining equity supply as a trio of mega initial public offerings brings a flood of new shares that investors warn could strain the limits of demand. However, without the tailwind of a shrinking supply of shares, some analysts and investors worry Wall Street’s tech-led rally could finally run out of steam. Read more
HSBC, Lloyds, and NatWest back UK’s first sovereign AI model - The UK government selected Cosine, an AI software and reasoning lab by software engineers Alistair Pullen, Yang Li, and Sam Stenner, as a flagship partner in its £500 million Sovereign AI programme in April. Read more
Citigroup is rolling out tokenized shares of private companies - The venture uses authorized, tokenized depositary receipts issued by Citi, initially for foreign investors, with U.S. access planned. The infrastructure, operated by Switzerland-based SIX, aims to broaden access to private firms and can be adopted by other banks. Read more
Mastercard enables AI agents to pay each other - This infrastructure can handle payments that are continuous, embedded, permissioned and executed at machine speed, and it can support credentialing, controls and guaranteed settlement across cards, stablecoins and other payment types. Its capabilities could be used, for example, by a merchant’s AI agent to launch a store’s web presence by buying a domain name, a hosting service, images and checkout pages. Read more
AI is upending traditional financial advisor jobs - Old-school wealth managers look more vulnerable to AI disruption than perhaps any other professionals in financial services. For the more than 326,000 personal financial advisers in the US and many thousands more abroad, the headlines are grim. Read more
Trump’s CFTC to propose new rules on what’s allowed on prediction markets - The CFTC proposed new rules for prediction markets, allowing most sports-related bets while seeking to avoid manipulation. The agency is seeking the ability to block prediction wagers it finds aren’t in the public interest or that seem highly susceptible to manipulation, such as in cases where one person could have outsize impact on the result. Read more
OpenAI plots biggest ChatGPT overhaul since launch - The company intends to transform the chatbot into a “superapp” that combines coding tools and AI agents, adding products that executives believe will generate more revenue. The changes are part of a broader reorganisation at OpenAI as the company shifts resources into trying to win lucrative business customers and compete more fiercely with rival Anthropic. Read more
US insurance rulemaker probes credit risks tied to data centres - The US insurance industry’s standard setter has begun to examine credit risks linked to data centre projects, which are increasingly showing up in insurers’ investment portfolios. Read more
MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho to launch joint stablecoin - Moving forward, the organisations aim to launch live transactions of the stablecoin during the fiscal year 2026. Read more
We will need a new tax code for the wealth AI creates - The current US tax code was designed for a world where labour gets a fair share of economic value creation and capital needs encouragement. But when AI and robotics compress labour while juicing capital returns, it will necessitate changes to the tax code. Amid the inequality and substantial unemployment AI may cause, we will need to sacrifice some capitalist efficiency to reduce suffering. Read more
Lloyds deliver new payment tech to SMEs in partnership with Stripe - Tools include Tap to Pay on smartphones, payment links and modern terminal devices for in-person payments. Read more
Visa launches AI, stablecoin tools to power agentic commerce - Visa highlighted several AI initiatives, including Agent Score, which assesses merchant readiness for agentic commerce; Agentic Directory, which verifies legitimate agents and merchants; its Large Transaction Model, which uses AI to improve fraud detection and authorization rates while reducing false declines; and a partnership with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce experiences. Read more
Prediction market wagers on World Cup winner climb to $2b - Prediction markets have taken bets worth close to $2b on which country will win the World Cup, putting them on course to potentially break the record for the biggest market in history more than five weeks before the final. Read more
Japan moves to regulate crypto like stocks in market growth push - The proposed legal changes come amid growing demand for crypto assets among Japanese financial institutions and retail investors. Regulators hope a clearer legal framework will boost the appeal of Japan’s market. Read more
Select Financings
Blnk - Egypt based point-of-sale consumer financing platform raised $37m in Series A funding led by Algebra Ventures. Read more
Capsa AI - UK based AI operating system for private capital firms raised $18m in Series A funding led by TX Ventures and Pivot Investment Partners. Read more
Digital Asset - New York based developer of the Canton Network, a privacy-enabled blockchain for institutional finance, raised $355m in new funding led by a16z crypto. Read more
Earlytrade - Colorado based working capital management platform for the construction industry raised $25m in new funding led by S3 Ventures and Brick & Mortar Ventures. Read more
EDGE Markets - Delaware based banking platform for gambling and prediction market spending raised $29.2m in Series A funding led by CoinFund. Read more
F2 - New York based AI platform for private credit funds and commercial banks raised $14m in Seed funding led by HighlandX. Read more
Hypha - New York based AI-native asset intelligence platform for private markets raised $50m in Seed funding led by TriEdge Investments. Read more
Morpho - Paris based DeFi lending and borrowing protocol raised $175m in new funding led by a16z crypto. Read more
Payper Cut - Bulgaria based payments platform for merchants across Central and Eastern Europe raised €5m in Seed funding led by Concentric, Passion Capital, and Araya Ventures. Read more
Poetic - California based AI platform automating complex regulated workflows like fraud investigations, compliance, and underwriting for financial institutions raised $50m in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins. Read more
Turnout - California based AI-powered consumer advocacy platform for benefits claims raised $35m in new funding led by HighPost Capital. Read more
Vinyl Equity - Illinois based modern transfer agent for public companies raised $20m in Series A funding led by Jump Capital. Read more
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