Spotlight: CAIS and Its Alternative Investment Marketplace for Independent Advisors
Every fund on the CAIS Marketplace passes a Mercer review, and the New York firm has since added custom feeder funds, structured notes, and secondary trading of private fund positions.
October 8, 2026
CAIS is a New York financial technology firm that runs a platform through which independent financial advisors buy alternative investments and structured notes from asset managers and bank issuers. Matt Brown founded the company in 2009 and remains its CEO. On July 29, 2026, CAIS announced a $170 million Series D led by Vista Equity Partners, with additional investment from AllianceBernstein, funds managed by Blue Owl Capital, Carlyle, Fortress Investment Group, Golub Capital, Lord Abbett, and Royal Bank of Canada. The firm says the round values it at more than $2 billion and brings total capital raised to nearly $600 million. Vista president David Breach joined the CAIS board, and Blue Owl, Lord Abbett, Fortress, and Carlyle each took a board observer seat.
According to CAIS, the platform serves more than 2,500 wealth management firms representing over 65,000 advisors, figures it published with the July 2026 announcement. It also cites roughly $8.5 trillion in end-client assets, and footnotes that number as the total wealth management AUM of firms with access to CAIS rather than assets placed through the platform. For the first half of 2026, the firm reports a 53% year-over-year rise in transaction volume and a 55% rise in total platform assets, and says it has onboarded more than 425 RIAs and independent broker-dealers since the start of 2025.
How the alternative investment marketplace works
Advisors use CAIS in one of two forms: the turnkey CAIS Marketplace, or CAIS Solutions, a customizable SaaS version that larger independent wealth management firms can configure. Every fund listed on the Marketplace goes through an independent review by Mercer, and CAIS discloses that Mercer holds no ownership stake in the company. Subscriptions run through electronic documents with built-in AML and KYC logic and e-signature, and positions feed into reporting at the custodians advisors already use. In 2026 CAIS deepened integrations with Schwab, Fidelity, BNY, and Goldman Sachs, reported record volume through self-clearing firms including Edward Jones and Baird, and added RedBlack, Inspira Financial, and BetaNXT as integration partners. The Inspira integration gives advisors on CAIS access to Inspira custody and account administration for private market investments.
Platform additions in the first half of 2026 completed the round trip on interval funds, with Schwab cash balances and ticker-based redemptions, and added multi-order signing for bulk processing. A tool called Payoff Explorer lets advisors model structured note outcomes.
Custom funds
Through CAIS Custom Funds, advisory teams with their own alternatives experience can launch single-manager feeder funds or multi-manager funds. CAIS describes the case in operational terms: one vehicle can give clients access to several underlying funds with one set of subscription documents and one K-1, and pooling capital may let an advisory firm negotiate capacity and terms such as investment minimums. CAIS handles vendor sourcing, fund formation, and document preparation, and can add fund-specific CAIS IQ courses to its education library.
Education and AI
CAIS IQ lists more than 200 courses, and advisors have earned more than 10,000 continuing education credits through it, according to the firm. CAIS Live, a series of in-person events hosted with wealth firms including Edward Jones, Mariner, Baird, and William Blair, had reached 50 events and more than 7,600 attendees as of July 2026. The firm's AI research agent, CAISey, answers advisor questions about platform data in conversational form and connects to Anthropic's Claude. CAIS holds its fifth annual CAIS Summit in Beverly Hills October 12 to 15, 2026, with more than 1,250 attendees expected.
Capital markets and a secondary market
CAIS Capital Markets, headed by partner Marc Premselaar, combines structured investments, trade execution, portfolio hedging, and managed strategies. In a September 17, 2026 release, the firm reported that activity across structured investments and portfolio hedging solutions rose 93% year over year in the first half of 2026. The menu now also includes new-issue equity offerings, through which advisors can view deal details and submit indications of interest, and third-party ETFs, including autocallable income ETFs from Schroders and REX Shares.
In October 2025, at that year's CAIS Summit, the firm announced a partnership with LODAS Markets to build secondary trading of private fund positions into its platform. In its July 2026 announcement, CAIS described the capability as live, allowing platform users to buy or sell certain alternative investment positions, and said it puts primary and secondary private market access on a single platform for the first time.
