Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisdomTree Inc., an ETF issuer with roughly $170 billion in AUM, focused on ETFs delivering exposure to private markets as the next step in the evolution of asset management during his appearance at the BNY INSITE 2026 conference in Aurora, Colo. Steinberg was featured in a panel titled “The Future of Asset Management and the Convergence with Wealth Management.”
Steinberg was critical of the push to have more retail investors allocate money to private markets through evergreen funds, including the Trump administration’s effort to expand access to alternatives through workplace retirement plans. He cited challenges, including limited liquidity and a lack of transparency into how private-market assets are priced within such funds, as reasons to view them with caution.
“People are telling retail investors: ‘You need to have up to 30% of your assets in private assets.’ Sounds like a lot!” Steinberg said, adding that “High fees can corrupt advice.” He also noted that private equity today does not deliver the same high returns as it did 15 to 20 years ago.
As another way to give retail investors exposure to private assets, WisdomTree acquired alternative asset manager Ceres Inc. last year, with plans to launch a commodities ETF with exposure to Ceres’ farmland holdings by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
According to Steinberg, as a result of the Ceres acquisition, WisdomTree has become the third-largest owner of farmland in the U.S. with 180,000 acres. Calling it “the most interesting asset class in the world,” Steinberg noted that WisdomTree will be competing with the Mormon church, Bill Gates and family farmers, rather than BlackRock or Blackstone, two of the largest alternative asset managers in the world. In addition, WisdomTree plans to launch an equity ETF with venture capital exposure in early 2027.
“What I don’t want to be is the last person buying SpaceX,” Steinberg said.
“As my competitors are taking private credit and putting it into interval funds, we will be taking private assets and putting them into ETFs,” he said. “We’ll be able to get to 15% [private asset] exposure, but there will be no K-1s, no paperwork, no holding period, no minimums, no maximums. And you, the advisor, will have a choice—you can lock up your client’s money and do all that comes with traditional private assets. It can absolutely be worth it. But that manager needs to be great. And you need to know your customer and sort out if it’s worth it for them.”
Steinberg also touched on how tokenization will likely revolutionize the financial services industry a generation from now. While WisdomTree holds $1 billion in tokenized digital assets, he admitted that today, the subject of tokenization is not relevant for most financial intermediaries.
“In fact, when it really evolves, you won’t even know. It’s like the internet—we don’t know how it works, it’s just out there embedded in everything we do. We’ll bring financial services onto the blockchain,” he said.
