If you want pre-IPO exposure to the AI boom through a regular brokerage account, you have two real choices. VCX, the Fundrise Growth Tech Fund, and DXYZ, Destiny Tech100. Both are closed-end funds. Both hold Anthropic. Both are volatile.
I own VCX and have been investing in Fundrise’s venture product since 2023. So take my bias into account. Fundrise primarily focuses on commercial real estate now that VCX is listed on the NYSE. But after going through both funds’ actual filings instead of the marketing, I keep landing in the same place.
DXYZ is selling you scarcity of which a great portion has already expired. VCX is still selling scarcity that exists.
Here’s the case. VCX and DXYZ are two ways to invest in Anthropic before the IPO, and I’m long both. I just have 75X more in VCX than I do in DXYZ for reasons I will share below.
Reason 1: DXYZ’s Second Biggest Bet Is A Stock You Can Already Buy
SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026 at $135 a share. It trades on the Nasdaq under SPCX. Anyone with a brokerage account can buy shares for free.
According to DXYZ’s most recent detailed portfolio disclosure, its SpaceX exposure runs across three separate vehicles totaling roughly 14.4% of the portfolio. That was the single biggest operating-company bet in the fund outside of Anthropic.
Think about what you’re actually paying for there.
You are paying a 2.5% annual management fee, on top of whatever premium to NAV the market is charging that day, to own a position in a company that has a ticker symbol. If you want SpaceX, buy SPCX. It costs you a commission of zero and a management fee of zero.
The entire reason a fund like this deserves a premium is access. Once the underlying company lists, the access is gone. What’s left is a middleman.
VCX had roughly 5% in SpaceX. Same problem, but one third the size and VCX only charges a 1.85% fee.
Reason 2: Nearly A Third Of DXYZ Was Sitting In A Money Market Fund
This is the number that stopped me.
In DXYZ’s portfolio table, the largest single line item was not Anthropic. It was not SpaceX. It was First American Treasury Obligations, Class X, at 31.4% of the portfolio, yielding 3.59%. For reference, the 10-year bond yield is currently above 4.5%.
I have nothing against Treasury money market funds. I own them. What I don’t do is pay 2.5% a year for the privilege of owning one, and then pay an additional premium above NAV on top of that.
There’s a reason for the pile. DXYZ has been selling shares into retail demand through an at-the-market (ATM) program, moving 8.5 million shares at a weighted average of $28.76 in a single quarter for about $244 million in net proceeds. Raising money is easy. Getting allocation into the best private AI rounds is hard. So the cash sits.
Add it up. Roughly 31% in cash, plus roughly 14% in a company that is now publicly traded, and about 45 cents of every dollar in DXYZ was doing something you could do yourself for free with a brokerage account and a Vanguard money market fund. VCX’s cash balance is smaller, at under 20% of the portfolio.
Related: Why Venture Capital Funds Must Get Bigger To Compete
Reason 3: VCX Owns The Four Companies That Are Still Private
This is the whole ballgame.
VCX’s top holdings are Anthropic, Databricks, OpenAI, and Anduril. It is hard to find a better venture fund portfolio than that.
As of my own analysis, that’s roughly 20.7%, 17.5%, 10%, and 7% of the fund at its listing NAV, with Anthropic now closer to 30% of the fund’s economic exposure after its markup from $350 billion to $965 billion.
Meanwhile, media reports are discussing Anthropic potentially going public at a $2 trillion valuation, or double its last fundraise.
All four are still private. All four have IPOs ahead of them, not behind them. Every one of them is growing into a market that did not exist five years ago.
DXYZ’s disclosed exposure to those same four names: Anthropic at 18.1%, OpenAI at 5.7%, Databricks at 2.5%, and Anduril at zero.
VCX vs DXYZ portfolio allocation. Disclosed weights, Q1 2026.
Look at that chart again. VCX’s four biggest bars are all companies you cannot buy any other way. DXYZ’s biggest bar is cash and its second biggest single-company bet is on the Nasdaq.
If the premium you pay is compensation for access, you want the fund whose access is still scarce. VCX’s NAV is of much higher quality than DXYZ’s NAV.
The Case For DXYZ
To be fair, here is the positive case for DXYZ: lower valuation.
DXYZ is probably cheaper on NAV right now, as it should be given 45% of the fund is in cash and a publicly traded stock.
As I write this, DXYZ trades around $32.59 against a March 31 NAV of $24.56. That looks like a 33% premium, except its NAV has almost certainly moved a lot since then. Anthropic got remarked, SpaceX went public at a valuation well above where DXYZ was carrying it, and outside analysts have floated mid-year NAV estimates in the $33 to $40 range. On those numbers, DXYZ may be trading at or below fair value.
VCX is trading in the $0s against my conservative NAV estimate of about $31. That is a premium, and I’ve been openly buying anyway because I think my $31 number is stale and my blue sky case is now in play.
However, if Anthropic IPOs around $2 trillion and continues to increase in valuation, I could see VCX’s NAV alone climb to $65 in 2027 and $98 in 2028. This does NOT count for any retail mania that ignited VCX’s shares by 20X during its first five months of trading.
DXYZ may be the better value trade. However, VCX is the far better portfolio.
Those are two different bets. If you want to arbitrage a discount, DXYZ deserves a look. If you want to own the specific companies that will define the next decade before the public gets a price on them, the portfolio matters more than the discount.
I’ve watched enough closed-end funds to know that a cheap fund holding mediocre assets stays cheap. And I’ve never once been paid for buying a fund because of its structure.
How I’m Actually Investing
I bought VCX from $29 – $41 after the August 13 lockup expiration, deploying about $120,000 of the $150,000 I set aside across my SEP-IRA, rollover IRA, and Solo 401(k). I’m building toward a $750,000 Anthropic position before the IPO.
I’m not selling below $65, which is my year-end 2027 NAV estimate under the blue sky scenario. I also own some DXYZ, but a much smaller amount than VCX.
That’s not a prediction that DXYZ goes down. It’s a statement about where I want my scarcity concentrated.
The Anthropic IPO is reportedly targeting October, potentially at $2 trillion or higher on revenue that has gone from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025 to north of $65 billion by July. When that ticker opens, the premium on every pre-IPO vehicle gets tested at once.
The fund that survives that test is the one still holding things you can’t buy anywhere else.
Understand The Risks Of Investing In VCX and DXYZ
Concentration cuts both ways. If Anthropic stumbles, VCX’s NAV stumbles harder than DXYZ’s would.
Private marks are stale by design. Both funds are carrying values set by valuation committees, not by markets.
Closed-end funds have no redemption mechanism, which is exactly why VCX traded above $380 in March and below $30 in August while owning nearly the same portfolio.
And the scarcity premium argument I just spent 1,200 words making has an expiration date. Invest accordingly.
Disclosure: I own VCX and am an investor in multiple Fundrise products. Fundrise is a long-time sponsor of Financial Samurai. All portfolio weights cited come from public SEC filings and my own estimates, not from either fund’s internal marks. This is not investment advice. Private company valuations change fast and both of these funds can trade at enormous premiums or discounts to NAV. Do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose.
About The Author
Sam started Financial Samurai in 2009 to help make sense of financial chaos. With an MBA from UC Berkeley and 13 years working in equities at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, he watched the IPO allocation process from the inside from 1999 to 2012 before retiring at 34. He kickstarted the modern-day FIRE movement in 2009.
Choosing between two similar-looking investments is the entire premise of his national bestseller Buy This Not That, which teaches a probabilistic framework for making high-stakes financial decisions when the answer isn’t obvious. He’s also the author of Millionaire Milestones: Simple Steps To Seven Figures, a USA Today bestseller, both with Portfolio Penguin Random House. A third book, Your Children Will Be OK, is on the way.
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