Alternative Investing Report - September 4, 2025

*as of 9/3; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, CL50

More than a quarter of U.S. homes worth $12.7 trillion are exposed to at least one type of severe or extreme climate risk - either floods, hurricanes, or wildfires. In total, 18.3% of homes face hurricane risk, 6.1% face flooding risk, and 5.6% face wildfire risk, with 39% of the latter segment in California. These concerns lead to increases in homeowner’s insurance premiums as well as difficulties obtaining specific coverages for floods, hurricanes and wildfires. Miami and New Orleans have the highest insurance premium-to-market value ratio of any markets in the country, more than four times the U.S. average.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Climate risk needs to be high on the list of factors for any potential homebuyer or real estate investor, as it affects property values, insurance costs, and the overall market in a given metro area. Keep in mind that this report only touches on homes facing severe or extreme risk — there are a lot of additional properties that are also at risk from natural factors — and as climate change continues, the areas affected will likely expand.

Individual investors in the U.S. committed $48 billion to private credit funds in the first half of 2025, putting the country on pace to top its record $83.4 billion figure from 2024. European individual investors have doubled their investment into private credit funds so far this year as well. As more investors turn to the asset class, the global market value of private credit funds is expected to double by 2029.

➨ TAKEAWAY: As large institutional investors have seen their allocations to private credit funds decrease, firms are turning to wealthy individual investors, and the logical next step is to pursue retail investors, as many firms have begun to do. There are now private credit ETFs and a number of platforms that offer private credit deals, so expect the asset class to continue to grow rapidly.

📊 JOLTS report: For the first time in four years, there are more unemployed people in the U.S. than job openings, a clear sign that the labor market is in trouble, with a highly anticipated jobs report expected Friday.

🤖 Anthropic fundraise: The AI startup raised a $13 billion round at a $183 billion post-money valuation, nearly tripling its last valuation of $61.5 billion in March, a rapid rise for the Claude creator.

🪙 American Bitcoin IPO: Shares of the Bitcoin mining company founded by Donald Jr. and Eric Trump were volatile, initially jumping 85% on its first day of trading before dropping below its IPO price and then ending the day with a 16.5% gain.

🚀 Cybersecurity funding: The sector had its strongest quarter since 2022 with more than $4 billion in VC funding across 163 deals, with the majority of deal value going to late-stage companies.

🎨 Lichtenstein works coming to auction: Later this month, 90 works by the famed pop artist will be sold at Sotheby’s, and are expected to fetch more than $15 million in total.

🏡 Vacation home sales declining: Home sales in vacation towns fell 3% year-over-year in July, the sixth straight month of falling sales volume, partially because of the slowdown in the short-term rental market.

One of the biggest and unintended winners of the AI boom? The British Overseas Territory of Anguilla, a Caribbean island with a population of only 16,000 people. The reason why? Their country code top-level internet domain, .ai, which has become a coveted part of many web addresses. The number of .ai addresses doubled in the last year and has increased 10x since 2020. The island is following in the footsteps of South Pacific islands Tuvalu (.tv) and Tonga (.to) in leveraging their lucky domain name draw. Last year, the country generated $39 million, an incredible 23% of its total revenues, from selling domain names, and 2025 projects to be even better.