#643
The Last Untapped Balance Sheet
Published:
May 23, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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For decades, the American real estate dream was simple: buy a home, pay down the mortgage, and one day the appreciation becomes a nest egg. Wall Street looked at that same equation but also saw something: trapped liquidity. After institutional investors spent the better part of the last decade buying single family homes, a new market is emerging around the equity inside them. A growing number of firms are offering homeowners upfront cash in exchange for a share of their future home appreciation, turning housing wealth itself into a tradable financial product: no monthly payments, no refinancing, just a contract tied to whatever the house is worth years from now.
The timing is not accidental. Millions of Americans remain locked into ultra low mortgage rates and have little interest in selling or refinancing even as they sit on record levels of accumulated equity. That has created one of the largest untapped pools of consumer balance sheet value in the world. And Wall Street x startups have arrived to engineer against it.
In some ways, this feels like the next logical chapter of financialization. Mortgages became mortgage backed securities. Rent streams became institutional assets. Now home appreciation itself is becoming investable. The pitch is clear: flexibility and access to liquidity for all. The criticism is more existential: if housing was historically the primary mechanism for middle class wealth creation, what happens when households no longer fully own the upside?
Portfolio News
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Octane closes $350m forward-flow agreement with Nuveen - Through this one-year agreement, Nuveen has agreed to purchase up to $350m of fixed-rate installment powersports and outdoor power equipment loans originated by Octane's in-house lender, Roadrunner Financial. The transaction, Octane's fifth forward-flow agreement to date, brings the total value of the Company's forward-flow commitments to more than $2.2b and expands Octane's relationship with Nuveen following the close of a $150m whole-loan sale in 2025. Read more
Plaid launches guaranteed ACH payments solution - Plaid has introduced a tool designed to help customers make smarter ACH-payment-related decisions. Some companies have built their own expertise in-house, turning to Plaid's ACH risk model Signal for greater insights, while other teams simply want answers. The company's Guaranteed Payments tool is designed for those teams — a fully managed bank payments solution that evaluates each transaction in real time and returns an approval almost instantly. Read more
The Last Untapped Balance Sheet
Wall Street takes its cut of $34t in US homeowner wealth - The products are the latest effort by Wall Street to meet global investors' voracious appetite for US housing by turning home equity into a tradable asset, fueled this time by the roaring growth in private credit. The contracts can be bundled, financed and sold to institutional investors, with investment banks packaging the HEIs into bond sales that are routinely oversubscribed. Read more
Industry News
Google and Blackstone to create new AI cloud company - The duo said they plan to launch the unnamed U.S. company with $5b in equity capital from Blackstone. The venture, the biggest attempt yet by Google to sell and monetize its own chips to external parties, will sharpen a rivalry with Nvidia, the market leader in AI computing. The new company aims in 2027 to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online, roughly the same amount of electric power required to serve a midsize city, and substantially increase capacity over time. Read more
Blink launches first tokenized exchange with NASDAQ-like infrastructure - Blink launched out of stealth this week as a crypto-native exchange combining Nasdaq-grade physical infrastructure with blockchain settlement on Solana. The exchange offers sub-1ms latency, equalized co-located access, and verifiable on-chain settlement, closing the gap between exchange-grade execution and crypto's native advantages of global access, fast settlement, and verifiability. Read more
AllianceBernstein teams with Brookfield, Carlyle on 401(k) push - The firms will collaborate on a single product that will invest in private equity, private credit and real assets for 401(k) and other workplace defined-contribution plans. The product, called ABC [ONE], is designed to be implemented alongside existing target-date funds or managed accounts, with investors' exposures to the underlying asset classes adjusted depending on when they're expected to retire. Read more
Yahoo Finance is building a Bloomberg Terminal for everyone else - The company is launching AlphaSpace, a fully customizable research dashboard that brings together data, charting, news, analysis and an AI assistant into a single interface. It is available immediately to subscribers of Yahoo Finance's Gold plan, folded in at no additional charge. Read more
Polymarket rolls out prediction markets tracking IPOs, valuations for private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX - The launch comes as crypto platforms are expanding and experimenting with their own products tied to private company valuations and IPO expectations. Polymarket's new offerings focus on event contracts tied to milestones and outcomes rather than equity ownership. Read more
SEC to ready plan for trading crypto versions of stocks - In a surprise move, the SEC is leaning toward a decision to allow the trading of tokens that do not have the backing or consent of the public companies whose shares they track. These "third party" tokens would be tradeable on decentralized crypto platforms, though they don't necessarily carry the same benefits as normal stocks, such as voting rights or dividends. Read more
Trafigura turns to Tether as stablecoins take on commodities - Commodity trading house Trafigura Group Pte Ltd. is in talks with Tether Inc. about a pilot project to use its stablecoin at fuel stations. The pilot would focus on facilitating payments at petrol stations operated by Trafigura's fuel distribution arm Puma Energy in El Salvador, with discussions at an early stage and subject to regulatory approvals. Read more
Financial data aggregators get pulled into the AI finance race - Last week, OpenAI introduced personal finance capabilities inside ChatGPT that allow users to connect financial accounts and receive responses grounded in transaction activity and account information, linking the accounts via Plaid. In April, Perplexity expanded its partnership with Plaid to let users connect checking accounts, credit cards and loans directly into its platform for spending analysis and financial management tools. Read more
Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago - They didn't give up because that wallet contained 5 BTC, and while this may not sound much, it has a value of almost $400,000. After finding a mnemonic that turned out to be their old password a few weeks ago, the user dumped their entire college computer files into Claude in a last-gasp effort. The bot uncovered an old backup wallet file, successfully decrypted it, and identified a bug in the password configuration that had been preventing recovery. Read more
The mysterious crypto judges who settle Polymarket disputes - The platforms aim to write clear yes-or-no questions for traders to wager on, but the messiness of real-world events means it isn't always obvious which side was right. Most firms, such as Kalshi, sort out disputes themselves; Polymarket outsources the task to a third-party service called UMA, which conducts votes when rival factions of traders disagree over who deserves a payout. Read more
Fed proposes limited payment accounts for fintech companies - The U.S. Federal Reserve proposed adopting a new, more limited form of a payment account that would allow firms to move money across the Fed's payment rails without enjoying all the backstops available to traditional banks. The accounts would not include access to intraday credit or the Fed's discount window, nor would firms earn interest on reserves held at the Fed. Read more
Select Financings
Benji - New York based API for loyalty partnerships raised $6.3m in Seed funding led by Preface Ventures and Atinc. Read more
Catena Labs - Boston based governance and banking platform for AI agents raised $30m in Series A funding led by Acrew Capital and a16z crypto. Read more
Commure - Mountain View based AI revenue cycle management and workflow automation tool for healthcare providers raised $70m in growth funding led by General Catalyst. Read more
Cycles - Toronto based crypto clearing network raised $6.4m in new funding led by Blockchange Ventures. Read more
Eisen - New York based compliance infrastructure platform for financial services raised $10m in Series A funding led by MissionOG. Read more
Elliptic - London based digital asset decisioning company raised $120m in Series D funding led by One Peak. Read more
equipfi - Arizona based BNPL software for financial institutions raised $34m in Series B funding led by Left Lane Capital. Read more
Farther - New York based intelligent wealth management company raised $150m in Series D funding led by General Atlantic. Read more
Fasset - Dubai based stablecoin neobank raised $51m in Series B funding led by SBI Group and Investcorp. Read more
getquin - Berlin based wealth platform for private investors raised €12m in new funding led by Portage and State Street Investment Management. Read more
Mercury - San Francisco based all-in-one financial platform for businesses raised $200m in Series D funding led by TCV. Read more
Moment - New York based AI operating system for investment management raised $78m in Series C funding led by Index. Read more
Nof1 - New York based AI research lab focused on financial markets raised $15m in new funding led by SUI Group and Karatage Opportunities. Read more
Pivot - Paris based AI operating system for procurement raised $40m in Series B funding led by Forestay Capital and Notion Capital. Read more
Primer - London based unified infrastructure for global payments raised $100m in Series C funding led by Sofina. Read more
Relay - Toronto based SMB digital banking fintech raised $50m in new funding led by General Catalyst. Read more
Rely - Maine based multifamily diligence platform raised $4.5m in Seed funding led by 2048 Ventures. Read more
Roadrunner - San Francisco based AI-native revenue infrastructure company raised $27m in combined Seed and Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund, respectively. Read more
Scapia - Bengaluru based travel fintech company raised $63m in growth funding led by General Catalyst. Read more
Segura - Rio de Janeiro based developer of an operating layer between insurers and brokers raised $8m in Seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kaszek. Read more
Sorted Wallet - Hong Kong based stablecoin wallet built for low-end smartphones and feature phones raised $4.4m in Seed funding led by Tether and Gnosis. Read more
StitcherAI - Seattle based platform designed to embed financial context in IT and AI investment decisions raised $3m in pre-Seed funding led by Founders Co-op. Read more
Variational - Kentucky based developer of a decentralized protocol for crypto trading raised $50m in Series A funding led by Dragonfly Capital. Read more
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