Retail Traders Shut Out of SpaceX IPO Are Finding Ways to Get In (1)

Tyler Woods was pretty sure he had made bank. The $2,000 he put into the Fundrise Innovation Fund (VCX) had turned into $76,000 in just four days.

“Dang,” thought the 19-year-old student at San Diego State University. “I’m, like, rich.”

He wasn’t, really—or at least not yet.

There are now a growing number of products giving ordinary investors exposure to private companies, and jumping into them when he did made Woods something of an early adopter. The Fundrise Innovation Fund holds stakes in some of the world’s most valuable startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX.

Historically, retail investors had few ways to ...