The fund hit $550. I watched it from Vienna, unable to touch it. Now it's at $113 — and I found a way in.
When I wrote about this in the original article, my main frustration was structural: as a European investor, MiFID II regulations make it effectively impossible to buy US-registered funds like the Fundrise Innovation Fund through standard Austrian brokers. The argument was about access. What I didn't expect was that by the time I'd found a solution, the price would have done most of the work for me.
What happened to VCX between March and now
When the Fundrise Innovation Fund listed on the NYSE under the ticker VCX on March 19, 2026, it opened at roughly $40 and ran to around $550 within weeks. That's not a typo. The excitement around its portfolio — OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, SpaceX — combined with pent-up retail demand for AI exposure created something that looked more like a meme stock moment than a rational price discovery process.
As of mid-April, it's trading at around $113. Still well above the last reported NAV of $18.26 before listing — so it's not cheap in any traditional sense — but the frenzy has clearly deflated. Whether $113 is the right price for a basket of late-stage private AI companies is genuinely hard to say. The underlying assets haven't changed. The sentiment has.
I'm not calling a bottom. And none of this is financial advice — I'm thinking out loud about my own situation, not prescribing anything for yours.
Can Europeans actually buy VCX? Here's what I found
Short answer: through certain UK and Swiss-regulated brokers, it appears to be possible — with some friction.
I reached out to Swissquote, the Swiss online broker, and the answer was more encouraging than I expected. They confirmed I could access VCX through their platform. The account costs around €90 per year — not nothing, but not prohibitive either if you're investing a meaningful amount.
The reason this works is that Swiss financial regulation operates outside the EU's MiFID II framework. Switzerland has its own ruleset, and Swissquote is licensed to give Swiss-account holders access to a broader range of US-listed securities — including ones that European brokers under MiFID II are blocked from offering without a KID (Key Information Document) that most US fund managers simply don't produce.
UK-regulated brokers are in a similar position post-Brexit — they've diverged from MiFID II in ways that occasionally open doors that remain closed for German, Austrian, or French retail investors.
So the workaround exists. It's just not frictionless.
The tax problem that makes this less obvious
Here's where it gets less exciting. VCX is not steuereinfach — a term Austrian investors will know well. It roughly translates to "tax-simple": funds and instruments where the broker automatically handles withholding tax, capital gains reporting, and annual statements in a format the Austrian tax authority accepts.
VCX is none of that. If I buy through Swissquote, I'm responsible for calculating and declaring every taxable event myself. That means tracking cost basis, dealing with foreign income reporting, and potentially navigating how Austria treats gains on a US-listed fund held through a Swiss account. It's doable, but it's the kind of thing that either requires a good tax advisor or a high tolerance for spreadsheets.
The real question isn't whether I can buy it. It's whether the additional operational overhead — €90/year account fee plus the tax admin — is worth it relative to what I'm actually trying to achieve.
What most people get wrong about the price drop
The instinct when something falls 80% is either panic or bargain-hunting. Both can be wrong.
VCX at $550 was pricing in euphoria about AI that had nothing to do with the underlying fund's NAV. VCX at $113 is still trading at a significant premium to the last reported book value of those private holdings. The private companies in the portfolio — OpenAI, Databricks, Anthropic — haven't had a 75% markdown. Their last private valuations are still intact. What's moved is the public market's willingness to pay a premium for access to those valuations.
That premium compression is actually the more interesting story. In March, the market was paying 30x NAV for the privilege of owning exposure to private AI companies. Now it's paying something closer to 6x. Both numbers reflect the same underlying assets. The question is what the "access premium" should rationally be — and I genuinely don't know. Nobody does with a lot of confidence.
What I do know is that the argument I made in the original article — that European retail investors are structurally locked out of early-stage tech wealth creation — hasn't changed. VCX at $113 doesn't solve that. It's one expensive, tax-complex workaround for one fund.
The price that made everyone jealous is gone. The one that might actually make sense is here now.
What to actually do
- If you're European and seriously interested: look at Swissquote or Interactive Brokers UK as the most accessible routes. Both operate outside MiFID II in meaningful ways. Account fees and FX costs matter more than people realise — model them before you invest.
- Run the tax math first: if you're Austrian, talk to a Steuerberater who handles foreign capital income before you buy a single share. The Kapitalertragsteuer situation on foreign instruments held via foreign brokers is not always clean. Don't guess.
- Don't anchor to $550: that was a mania price. The relevant comparison is to the underlying private market valuations — which are harder to find but more honest.
- Set a monitoring threshold, not a FOMO threshold: I'm watching this, not buying on impulse. If the premium to NAV compresses further and I've cleared the tax question, that's when it becomes a real decision — not before.
- Consider the opportunity cost: €90/year plus tax admin time has a value. If that same energy goes into understanding a more accessible investment, it might return more. I'm genuinely undecided here.
- I'll keep posting updates: this is an evolving situation and I'd rather document the thinking publicly than pretend I have it figured out.
The story isn't over. It's just less loud now — which is usually when it gets interesting.