Good day. Investment platform Fundrise, which has been planning to list its venture fund on the New York Stock Exchange, is waiting for market volatility to die down before pursuing a public listing, said Benjamin Miller, chief executive of the firm.

“I’m watching the Strait of Hormuz like everyone else,” Miller said, referring to the vital shipping lane blocked by Iran due to the war.

Fundrise had been preparing to list its Fundrise Innovation Fund, a venture fund with more than $650 million in assets under management and about 100,000 shareholders. Fundrise would follow Robinhood Ventures Fund I in being a rare publicly listed venture pool.

At first, the company had expected to be ready to list as of March 10 but additional logistics had to be sorted out, Miller said. Fundrise has the option to list starting on Tuesday, but Miller is holding off.

The war in Iran is reverberating through the global economy. Miller said he’s watching the Cboe Volatility Index. “You don’t want to go out when VIX is through the roof,” he said. The index jumped after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

Fundrise Innovation Fund’s top holdings are artificial-intelligence companies Anthropic, Databricks and OpenAI. Fundrise isn’t planning to raise any capital during its listing, which will be conducted as a direct listing, a type of public offering, Miller said. Instead, the plan is to allow Fundrise’s shareholders the option to trade their shares in the fund after a six-month lockup. Previously, shareholders could get redemptions on a quarterly basis, Miller said.

Listing the fund would improve individual investors’ access to private tech companies, Miller said. Fundrise’s public plan comes after the public listing of Robinhood Ventures Fund I earlier this month. Robinhood Ventures priced its shares on March 6 at $25, bringing the size of the fund to $658.4 million, less than the $1 billion it targeted. Shares ended at $21 on the first day of trading.

Miller said he believes he’s not the only one staying on the sidelines of public markets for now.

“This is not a market that’s conducive to a wave of public offerings,” he said.

And now on to the news...

Strategy shift. OpenAI’s top executives are finalizing plans for a major strategy shift to refocus the company around coding and business users, recognizing that a “do everything all at once” strategy has put them on the defensive. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, previewed the changes to employees in an all-hands meeting, telling them that top leaders including CEO Sam Altman and chief research officer Mark Chen were actively looking at which areas to deprioritize. They expect to notify staff about the changes in the coming weeks. 

A U.S. startup backed by Nvidia is investing billions of dollars to build artificial-intelligence models with a South Korean partner, accelerating the Trump administration’s plans to combat China by exporting American technology around the world. Reflection AI, a two-year-old company launched by former researchers at Google’s DeepMind AI lab, is working with Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group to build a data center that will be one of the nation’s biggest facilities powering AI models, company and government officials said. Reflection plans to develop models customized for Korean language and culture, the officials said.

Sands Capital has raised $1.1 billion for a fund to back growth investments that help pave the way for initial public offerings by maturing technology companies. The final tally for Sands Capital Global Innovation III exceeded the firm’s $1 billion target and the $780 million that it raised for a predecessor fund, which closed in 2021. Investors that have backed the fund include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and funds managed by Hamilton Lane.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing a proposal to eliminate the requirement to report earnings quarterly and instead give companies the option to share results twice a year, according to people familiar with the matter. The regulator could publish the proposal as soon as next month, the people said. Once the proposal is published, it will be subject to a public comment period. After that period, which typically lasts at least 30 days, the SEC will vote on it.

Funds

Paris-headquartered Partech closed its inaugural Impact Fund at €300 million (about $345 million) to invest in European B2B tech companies.

Montréal-based early-stage investor Boreal Ventures held the first 43 million Canadian dollar (about $31 million) close of its second fund, which has a target of C$60 million.

RoboForce, a Milpitas, Calif.-based designer of robots that perform high-risk, tedious work across demanding industrial environments, scored a $52 million investment led by YZi Labs.

Halcyon, a San Francisco-headquartered startup building an AI-assisted search and information platform for the energy industry, raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Energize Capital.

Great Sky, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup building a new computing architecture for AI, was seeded with a $14 million investment. Bison Ventures led the round, which included participation from Matchstick Ventures and Range Ventures.

Zero RFI, a San Francisco-based AI-native platform for the construction industry, secured $13.8 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst.

Taya, a San Francisco-based designer of AI jewelry that provides single‑player voice capture, landed $5 million in seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital and Female Founders Fund.

Eileen, a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based retail technology platform, closed a $1 million pre-seed round led by Top Shelf Ventures.

• Target’s Tech Chief Has a Big Role to Play in Turnaround Plan

• Nvidia’s CEO Projects $1 Trillion in AI Chip Sales as New Computing Era Begins

• What Is Inference? Explaining the Massive New Shift in AI Computing

• Nvidia-Backed Nscale Plans Huge Data Center Cluster in West Virginia

• Intuit Halts Management Stock Sales, Accelerates Buybacks

   

• Bill Gurley on AI bubble: A bunch of people got rich quick and a reset is coming (CNBC)
   
• Moltbook updated its terms after the Meta acquisition—and you're officially responsible for your agent (Business Insider)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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