iCapital CEO On Partnerships, Blockchain And Wider Alternative Asset Access

Tom Burroughes

13 June 2025

, which is headquartered in Germany.)

That need for wider access is gaining attention from policymakers, in Europe for example. More broadly, financial industry figures say that many private investors still don't have enough exposure to areas such as private equity, venture capital, and other non-public investment areas.

This publication asked Calcano about the work that jurisdictions must engage in to bring alternative investments to the mass-affluent market, such as the UK’s Long Term Asset Fund in the UK and ELTIFs in Europe. (ELTIF is a regulatory wrapper that gives closed-ended private assets funds a single passport to be marketed to private wealth investors across the EU.)

“We are building capabilities for structures in different local markets,” he said.

And the firm’s experience is one that Calcano is happy to share with regulators. “We are in a position to try to help regulators through what we see every day and help regulators about what’s going on.”

Growth
The firm continues to grow; it opened an office in Tokyo in 2023 and is planning to open one in Australia and the Gulf Cooperation Council collection of countries in the Middle East. The business has partnered with MPW Capital Advisors as part of its Gulf region build-out.

What barriers remain to growth in iCapital’s sector?

Education and ease of use are two remaining barriers to entry for wealth advisors to go all in on the alternatives asset class, Calcano replied. The firm is investing heavily into technology, for example, to reduce the frictions.

Talk of technology brought up the topic of distributed ledger technology – aka blockchain technology. This is now part of iCapital’s system. In March this year, it said that since launching the first fund on iCapital DLT – its blockchain platform – in May 2024, the company has onboarded more than 100 funds onto the platform.

Artificial intelligence was, perhaps inevitably, part of the technology conversation.

“iCapital positions itself as a technology-first company, with AI and machine learning (ML) playing a central role in its digital transformation. iCapital integrates AI, ML, automation, and data-driven insights across its platform to streamline the entire investment lifecycle – from pre-investment to post-investment,” Calcano said.

iCapital’s recent acquisitions of Mirador (see here), AltExchange and Parallel Markets (see here) are “evidence of the evolution of our data-driven insights and AI/Machine learning capabilities,” he said.

Educating clients about what is realistic when it comes to alternative investments is important, he said, to avoid disappointments down the line.

“It is important for people to understand what to expect. The whole industry is better served if people allocate in a measured way,” he said.

Calcano said that using model portfolios has become a lot more important than was the case few years ago. That seems borne out by industry research. A 2024 study from BlackRock and Institutional Investor’s custom research group found that a majority of the 500 wealth managers in the study said they would like to have private equity or private credit available to clients through model portfolios (source: Institutional Investor, 29 April).