AI Infrastructure Firm Whitefiber Seeks $132.8 Million in IPO
The New York-based company plans to market 7.8 million shares for $15 to $17 each, according to its filing Tuesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Private-credit ETFs are here. Why your retirement account may be their next target.
Private-credit exchange-traded funds aren't in 401(k)s yet — but they are Wall Street's latest effort to bring private assets to the masses and, eventually, into retirement plans. At least three ETF developers — StateStreet, BondBloxx and Virtus — have launched funds designed to tap into private credit, either directly or through collateralized loan obligations. 'I told him that wouldn't fly': My 90-year-old mother's adviser pushed her to change her beneficiaries. What is going on? Bonds and the dollar are sounding the alarm about the U.S. economy. Stock investors might want to heed the warning. Older adults on 'edge of poverty' lose jobs and funding as new Medicaid and SNAP work requirements loom Invest in Gold Priority Gold: Up to $15k in Free Silver + Zero Account Fees on Qualifying Purchase American Hartford Gold: #1 Precious Metals Dealer in the Nation Thor Metals Group: Best Overall Gold IRA These funds mark the latest effort to bring a popular Wall Street product within reach of retail investors, allowing them to easily buy and sell in the $1.6 trillion private market for loans made by nonbank lenders to medium-sized companies, in return for yields of up to around 10% — much higher than publicly traded debt instruments like bonds or Treasurys. Sound enticing? There's a catch: How will inherently hard-to-value assets that can't easily be sold perform in a fund wrapper that trades continuously on a public exchange? In other words, are less-liquid assets appropriate for an ETF wrapper? The rise of these private-credit products is raising alarms among market observers, as many see the lines between liquid and illiquid, public and private, transparent and opaque becoming increasingly blurred. What was once an asset class reserved for sophisticated institutions is now being sliced, repackaged and sold as an easy income solution for yield chasers through ETFs or mutual funds — a shift that could make them risky and potentially harmful for everyday investors. Private credit refers to privately negotiated loans between borrowers — typically small to midsize private companies — and nonbank financial institutions. Unlike public debts such as corporate bonds, which can usually be priced on a daily basis even if they are not traded on exchanges, private-credit loans are often less liquid and are rarely traded on the secondary market. This makes them harder to value on a daily basis and more difficult for investors to exit quickly — especially in times of market stress. Investors should be very careful about the asset/liability mismatch in private-credit ETFs, said Paul Olmsted, senior analyst of fixed-income strategies at Morningstar. 'An investment that technically should be longer-term, less liquid, is perhaps not appropriate in a daily liquid vehicle,' he told MarketWatch via phone. As a result, these ETFs 'are not attracting as many retail investors as you might think,' he added, since they cannot seamlessly trade in and out of the fund. The potential liquidity mismatch also raises questions about how such assets fit within existing regulatory frameworks. Since 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission has barred U.S.-based open-end funds, including ETFs, from having more than 15% of their assets in illiquid holdings. This is known as the liquidity rule, and it aims to manage liquidity risk and ensure that funds can meet redemption obligations so that investors can easily enter or exit positions without significantly affecting the price of the funds. ETF issuers are searching for ways to navigate that rule and are rolling out products that push up against the boundaries of what's permissible. For the groundbreaking SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF PRIV, State Street STT — one of the world's largest ETF managers — said its private-credit exposure is expected to be between 10% and 35% of the portfolio, but it has attempted to solve this liquidity problem by partnering with Apollo Global Management APO, one of the largest private-credit managers in the world. Under this arrangement, Apollo has agreed to provide bids, or to buy back the fund's private-credit holdings if State Street asks it to, of up to 25% a day and 50% a week. As a result, its private-credit holdings could be classified as liquid and thus exempt from the 15% illiquid-asset limit. As of July 31, most of PRIV's holdings are in Treasurys, agency mortgages and public corporate debt. Only around 22% of the fund is in 'Apollo-sourced investments,' according to the fund's website. Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research and analytics at CFRA Research, said it's worth noting — if applying a 'narrower' definition of private credit that focuses on direct lending and illiquid private placements — that not everything Apollo sources, but rather only about 7% of the fund, is in 'true private credit.' Ullal cited fixed-income research and data firm Solve. But unlike the initial frenzy leading up to its debut in late February, the hotly anticipated PRIV failed to gain traction until very recently. After a slow start, the fund has attracted around $90 million of net inflows since June and now oversees $145 million, according to FactSet data. The expense ratio for PRIV is 70 basis points, compared with 9 basis points for the firm's largest and most heavily traded fund — the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, according to FactSet data. State Street is also planning a second ETF that provides exposure to private debt that may also be sourced by Apollo, the SPDR SSGA Short Duration IG Public & Private Credit ETF, according to an SEC filing in May. Apollo declined to comment on the sudden uptick in net inflows over the past month. State Street didn't respond to a MarketWatch request for comment. But while regulators work to draw clearer lines around what qualifies as illiquid, industry leaders argue that the traditional divide between public and private debt is becoming increasingly blurred. Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, said in a CNBC interview late last year that he predicts investors will not be able to tell the difference between public and private credit a year from now, as some public corporate bonds are already illiquid, often taking up to five days to sell during periods of stress. 'It won't be different issuers, it won't be different ratings, it won't be different sizes, and it won't even be different liquidity. Everything that exists in the public markets on the fixed-income side — repo, borrowing, easy leverage, ratings, daily pricing — is all coming to the private market,' Rowan said. 'When you think that 80% of the U.S. companies with over $100 million in revenues are privately held, not public, why would you exclude yourself from that much of the marketplace?' Rowan also said the notion of a 'liquidity discount' in private credit is going to 'disappear,' because 'there's not going to be appreciable differences in liquidity' between private and public assets. As a result, the traditional market beliefs that private assets somehow equal risk or that 'private' infers a size of a company are becoming outdated and will be seen very differently than in the past, he said. The launch of private-credit ETFs this year also comes as regulators revisit how much exposure to private markets retirement savers should be allowed to take. The Office of the Investor Advocate at the SEC announced on June 25 that it would prioritize 'Private Market Investments in Retirement Accounts' as an objective for 2026. Meanwhile, the push to add private securities to 401(k) menus has also become a shared priority for some of Wall Street's largest asset managers and for the Trump administration. BlackRock BLK — the world's largest asset manager — is preparing to offer a 401(k) target-date fund with a 5% to 20% allocation to private investments in the first half of 2026, the company said in a press release last month. The firm also said it believes 'the portfolio of the future' will be made up of 50% public equities, 30% public fixed income and 20% private markets. Empower, which manages around $1.8 trillion in retirement accounts for nearly 19 million Americans, announced in May that it would begin offering access to alternative investments — including private equity and private credit — through the retirement plans it oversees. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been explicitly supporting the effort to allow private securities in defined‑contribution plans like 401(k)s and 403(b)s. President Donald Trump has reportedly considered an executive order designed to make private-market investments more accessible to retirement plans. Some lawmakers are skeptical of the push to include private assets in retirement plans. Most notably, Elizabeth Warren, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, earlier this month called for the Financial Stability Oversight Council to design and conduct a stress test of nonbank financial institutions engaged in private-credit activities, expressing concerns about their potential risks to financial stability. See: Inside the great ETF boom of 2025: 'How do you navigate all this?' While it's still unclear in what form private assets will ultimately enter retirement accounts, there are multiple pathways being tested. For example, ETFs don't have to go straight into private credit but can go through private-credit collateralized loan obligations, also known as private-credit CLOs. A CLO is an actively managed securitized product backed by a highly diversified portfolio of loans. A private-credit CLO pools those private loans and issues different tranches of securities — ranging from AAA to B — to investors, with higher-rated, lower-yielding securities that are at lower risk of losses due to potential default of the underlying loans. As a result, investors in CLO ETFs aren't buying the loans directly, but rather floating-rate debt securities that are constructed by a CLO manager and used to purchase the loans. 'The beauty of the CLOs is that they offer us liquidity, because at the end of the day, they're like bonds, and they trade in the market,' said Tony Kelly of BondBloxx, who co-founded the first ETF company to focus solely on fixed-income products. 'Within a private-credit CLO, there are approximately 100 different loans in the underlying [portfolio], and that's what gives the ETF the private-credit exposure, but the CLO layer gives us the liquidity that we need to be able to manage the fund,' he told MarketWatch in a phone interview. The $134 million BondBloxx Private Credit CLO ETF PCMM has over 80% of its assets in CLOs that invest in middle-market loans, according to the company website. A similar product from Virtus Investments — the $19 million Virtus SEIX AAA Private Credit CLO PCLO — has over 90% of its assets in middle-market CLOs. Over the past few years, the financial-services industry has seen a significant trend of converting illiquid assets such as private-credit loans into liquid, tradable securities like CLOs. Private-credit CLOs are a relatively new but rapidly growing segment within the broader CLO market. While broadly syndicated loan, or BSL, CLOs still dominate the CLO market in terms of scale, middle-market CLOs are gaining traction due to the rise of private credit. At the end of 2024, private-credit CLOs made up roughly 15% of the broader $1.3 trillion CLO market, according to Moody's. However, some CLO portfolio managers and ETF developers argue that while securitizing private credit through CLOs does enhance tradability and makes it appear more liquid to investors, it doesn't change the illiquid nature of the underlying assets. Unlike BSL CLOs, which pool large, publicly rated and liquid loans originated by banks and sold to multiple lenders, private-credit CLOs are more of a 'black box of loans' that have less transparency and less liquidity and are nearly impossible to rate, said William Sokol, director of product management at VanEck. The firm's $1 billion VanEck CLO ETF CLOI invests primarily in investment-grade-rated tranches. 'How we make the decision on whether to buy a CLO is by looking at the [CLO] manager, looking at the portfolio and understanding the deal, but you can't really do that in a private-credit CLO, because you can't really do that level of due diligence on the underlying private loans,' Sokol told MarketWatch in a phone interview. 'We cannot get the same level of comfort around the pricing of a CLO that's backed by middle-market or private loans that barely ever trades, and that makes it a lot less appropriate for daily liquidity of an ETF,' said Fran Rodilosso, head of fixed-income ETF portfolio management at VanEck. Of course, the biggest risk for a credit-market investor is a systematic credit event — like a major economic downturn — that could lead to a cascade of defaults and a freeze in liquidity across credit markets. Signs of concern emerged in the CLO market in April after tariff-fueled volatility sent the U.S. financial market into a tailspin. Investors worried that corporate borrowers faced squeezed margins and refinancing headwinds if Trump's aggressive tariffs were to trigger a recession in the U.S. economy, and they didn't know whether these higher-yielding investment vehicles could weather the storm. On April 7, the $20 billion Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF JAAA, which primarily invests in the seniormost tranches of BSL CLOs, saw $585 million in net outflows, the biggest single-day withdrawal since the fund's inception in October 2020. The exodus also pushed the fund to trade at a record 1.1% discount to its net asset value, according to Dow Jones Market Data. VanEck's CLOI also experienced over $50 million in net outflows on April 8, the largest one-day exodus since the fund's inception in June 2022, according to FactSet data. But in the view of VanEck's Rodilosso, the significant amount of outflows actually suggests the BSL CLO market has proven liquid and resilient. 'We've seen our first period of stress in April, and there was some movement into discounts to net asset value, but these CLO ETFs saw decent size of redemption activities, so the market did function,' he told MarketWatch via phone. 'It's only one test so far, but these [BSL CLO] ETFs have held up for the most part,' Rodilosso said. However, private-credit CLO ETFs have not yet faced a real-world systemic test and thus carry greater structural uncertainty should such an event hit. 'That would be even a bigger concern for the ETFs that are putting private credit [into their portfolio holdings] either through the loans themselves or through tranches of private-credit CLOs,' said Jon Brager, portfolio manager at Palmer Square Capital Management. 'How are you managing your overall liquidity, given that the underlying [portfolio] is certainly less liquid, if not illiquid, in particular in times of stress?' 'I have never been asked for money before': My friend wants to borrow $1,600 to pay her rent. Do I say yes? I'm trustee of $65,000 going to my nephew. What are the rules for what I can do with the money? This trader is sounding the alarm over stocks. Why he's pressing the sell button now. 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Miami Herald
27 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Whataburger debuts limited-time burger, plus a new treat. When can you get them?
Whataburger fans can soon sip — or sink their teeth into two new menu items. The Dr Pepper blackberry shake and bacon wrangler double arrive Tuesday, Aug. 5, at participating restaurants nationwide, according to the Texas-based burger chain. The limited-time offerings are the latest to land at Whataburger as the brand celebrates 75 years, marking 'its diamond anniversary' with new and returning menu favorites. In a nod to its Texas roots, the bacon wrangler double features two beef patties topped with bacon, American and Monterey Jack cheeses, crispy onions and garlic aioli on a toasted bun, Whataburger said in a news release. 'As a proud Texas-born brand, Whataburger was built on bold flavors, genuine hospitality and a spirit that feels like home,' President and CEO Debbie Stroud said in the release. 'The Bacon Wrangler Double is a delicious reminder that you can always experience a little bit of that spirit with every bite.' Customers can wash it all down with the new Dr Pepper blackberry shake, also available for a limited time. It's a fruity take on the original Dr Pepper shake, combining Whataburger's vanilla soft serve with Dr Pepper 'and a touch of blackberry flavor,' according to the restaurant's website. The burger chain offered a Dr Pepper blackberry-flavored soda at restaurants earlier this year to rave reviews. 'We paired two Texas favorites in a way that feels fresh but familiar — fun, unexpected, and full of that signature Whataburger deliciousness,' Scott Hudler, chief marketing officer for Whataburger, said at the time. Pricing information wasn't immediately available. Find your nearest Whataburger here.
TechCrunch
37 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
The uproar over Vogue's AI-generated ad isn't just about fashion
Sarah Murray recalls the first time she saw an artificial model in fashion: It was 2023, and a beautiful young woman of color donned a Levi's denim overall dress. Murray, a commercial model herself, said it made her feel sad and exhausted. The iconic denim company had teamed up with the AI studio to create 'diverse' digital fashion models for more inclusive ads. For an industry that has failed for years to employ diverse human models, the backlash was swift, with New York Magazine calling the decision 'artificial diversity.' 'Modeling as a profession is already challenging enough without having to compete with now new digital standards of perfection that can be achieved with AI,' Murray told TechCrunch. Two years later, her worries have compounded. Brands continue to experiment with AI-generated models, to the consternation of many fashion lovers. The latest uproar came after Vogue's July print edition featured a Guess ad with a typical model for the brand: thin yet voluptuous, glossy blond tresses, pouty rose lips. She exemplified North American beauty standards, but there was one problem — she was AI generated. The internet buzzed for days, in large part because the AI-generated beauty showed up in Vogue, the fashion bible that dictates what is and is not acceptable in the industry. The AI-generated model was featured in an advertisement, not a Vogue editorial spread. And Vogue told TechCrunch the ad met its advertising standards. To many, an ad versus an editorial is a distinction without a difference. TechCrunch spoke to fashion models, experts, and technologists to get a sense of where the industry is headed now that Vogue seems to have put a stamp of approval on technology that's poised to dramatically change the fashion industry. Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW They said the Guess ad drama highlights questions arising within creative industries being touched by AI's silicon fingers: When high-quality creative work can be done by AI in a fraction of the time and cost, what's the point of humans? And in the world of fashion, what happens to the humans — the models, photographers, stylists, and set designers — performing those jobs? 'It's just so much cheaper' Sinead Bovell, a model and founder of the WAYE organization who wrote about CGI models for Vogue five years ago, told TechCrunch that 'e-commerce models' are most under threat of automation. E-commerce models are the ones who pose for advertisements or display clothes and accessories for online shoppers. Compared to high-fashion models, whose striking, often unattainable looks are featured in editorial spreads and on runways, they're more realistic and relatable. 'E-commerce is where most models make their bread and butter,' Bovell said. 'It's not necessarily the path to model fame or model prestige, but it is the path for financial security.' sinead bovell, founder & model Image Credits:Sinead Bovell That fact is running in direct contrast to the pressure many brands feel to automate such shoots. Paul Mouginot, an art technologist who has worked with luxury brands, said it's simply expensive to work with live models, especially when it comes to photographing them in countless garments, shoes, and accessories. 'AI now lets you start with a flat-lay product shoot, place it on a photorealistic virtual model, and even position that model in a coherent setting, producing images that look like genuine fashion editorials,' he told TechCrunch. Brands, in some ways, have been doing this for a while, he said. Mouginot, who is French, cited the French retailer Veepee as an example of a company that has used virtual mannequins to sell clothes since at least 2013. Other notable brands like H&M, Mango, and Calvin Klein have also resorted to AI models. Amy Odell, a fashion writer and author of a recently published biography on Gwyneth Paltrow, put it more simply: 'It's just so much cheaper for [brands] to use AI models now. Brands need a lot of content, and it just adds up. So if they can save money on their print ad or their TikTok feed, they will.' PJ Pereira, co-founder of AI ad firm Silverside AI, said it really comes down to scale. Every conversation he's had with fashion brands circles around the fact that the entire marketing system was built for a world where brands produced just four big pieces of content per year. Social media and e-commerce has changed that, and now they need anywhere from 400 to 400,000 pieces; it's too expensive for brands, especially small ones, to keep up. 'There's no way to scale from four to 400 or 400,000 with just process tweaks,' he added. 'You need a new system. People get angry. They assume this is about taking money away from artists and models. But that's not what I've seen.' From 'diverse' models to AI avatars Murray, a commercial model, understands the cost benefits of using AI models, but only to an extent. sarah murray Image Credits:Courtesy of Sarah Murray She lamented that brands like Levi's claim AI is only meant to supplement human talent, not take away. 'If those [brands] ever had the opportunity to stand in line at an open casting call, they would know about the endless amounts of models, including myself, that would dream of opportunities to work with their brands,' she said. 'They would never need to supplement with anything fake.' She thinks such a shift will impact 'non-traditional' — think, diverse — commercial models, such as herself. That was the main problem with the Levi's ad. Rather than hiring diverse talent, it artificially generated it. Bovell calls this 'robot cultural appropriation,' or the idea that brands can just generate certain, especially diverse, identities to tell a brand story, even if the person who created the technology isn't of that same identity. And though Pereira argues that it's unrealistic to shoot every garment on every type of model, that hasn't calmed the fears many diverse models have about what's to come. 'We already see an unprecedented use of certain terms in our contracts that we worry indicate that we are possibly signing away our rights for a brand to use our face and anything recognizable as ourselves to train their future AI systems,' Murray said. Some see generating likenesses of models as a way forward in the AI era. Sara Ziff, a former model and founder of the Model Alliance, is working to pass the Fashion Workers Act, which would require brands to get a model's clear consent and provide compensation for using their digital replicas. Mouginot said this lets models appear at several shoots on the same day and possibly generate additional income. That's 'precious when a sought-after model is already traveling constantly,' he continued. But at the same time, whenever an avatar is hired, human labor is replaced. 'What few players gain can mean fewer opportunities for many others.' If anything, Bovell said the bar is now higher for models looking to compete with the distinctive and the digitized. She suggested that models use their platforms to build their personal brands, differentiate themselves, and work on new revenue streams like podcasting or brand endorsements. 'Start to take those opportunities to tell your unique human story,' she said. 'AI will never have a unique human story.' That sort of entrepreneurial mindset is becoming table stakes across industries — from journalism to coding — as AI creates the conditions for the most self-directed learners to rise. Room for another view Artcare AI-generated model. Image Credits:Artcare Mouginot sees a world where some platforms stop working with human models altogether, though he also believes humans share a desire for the 'sensual reality of objects, for a touch of imperfection and for human connection.' 'Many breakthrough models succeed precisely because of a distinctive trait, teeth, gaze, attitude, that is slightly imperfect by strict standards yet utterly charming,' he said. 'Such nuances are hard to erode in zeros and ones.' This is where startup and creative studio Artcare thrives, according to Sandrine Decorde, the firm's CEO and co-founder. She refers to her team as 'AI artisans,' creative people who use tools like Flux from Black Forest Labs to fine-tune AI-generated models that have that touch of unique humanity. Much of the work Decorde's firm does today involves producing AI-generated babies and children for brands. Employing minors in the fashion industry has historically been a gray area rife with exploitation and abuse. Ethically, Decorde argues, bringing generative AI to children's fashion makes sense, particularly when the market demand is so high. 'It's like sewing; it's very delicate,' she told TechCrunch, referring to creating AI-generated models. 'The more time we spend on our datasets and image refinements, the better and more consistent our models are.' Screenshot from Seraphinne Vallora's Instagram page. Image Credits:Seraphinne Vallora Part of the work is building out a library of distinctive artifacts. Decorde noted that many AI-generated models — like the ones created by Seraphinne Vallora, the agency behind Vogue's Guess ad — are too homogenous. Their lips are too perfect and symmetrical. Their jawlines are all the same. 'Imagery needs to make an impact,' Decorde said, noting that many fashion brands like to work exclusively with certain models, a desire that has spilled over into AI-generated models. 'A model embodies a fashion brand.' Pereira added that his firm combats homogeneity in AI 'with intention' and warned that as more content gets made by more people who aren't intentional, all of the output feeds back into computer models, amplifying bias. 'Just like you would cast for a wide range of models, you have to prompt for that,' he said. 'You need to train [models] with a wide range of appearances. Because if you don't, the AI will reflect whatever biases it was trained on.' An AI future is promised, but uncertain The usage of AI modeling technology in fashion is mostly still in its experimental phase, Claudia Wagner, founder of modeling booking platform Ubooker, told TechCrunch. She and her team saw the Guess ad and said it was interesting technically, but it wasn't impactful or new. H&M Digital model Image Credits:H&M 'It feels like another example of a brand using AI to be part of the current narrative,' she told TechCrunch. 'We're all in a phase of testing and exploring what AI can add — but the real value will come when it's used with purpose, not just for visibility.' Brands are getting visibility from using AI — and the Guess ad is the latest example. Pereira said his firm recently tested a fully AI-generated product video on TikTok that got more than a million views with mostly negative comments. 'But if you look past the comments, you see that there's a silent majority — almost 20x engagement — that vastly outnumber the criticism,' he continued. 'The click-through rate was 30x the number of complaints, and the product saw a steep hike in sales.' He, like Wagner, doesn't think AI models are going away anytime soon. If anything, the process of using AI will be integrated into the creative workflow. 'Some brands feel good about using fully artificial models,' Pereira said. 'Others prefer starting with real people and licensing their likeness to build synthetic shoots. And some brands simply don't want to do it — they worry their audiences won't accept it.' Wagner said what is becoming evident is that human talent remains central, especially when authenticity and identity are part of a brand's story. That's especially true for luxury heritage brands, which are usually slow to adopt new technologies. Though Decorde noted many high-fashion brands are quietly experimenting with AI, Mouginot said many are still trying to define their AI policies and are avoiding fully AI-generated people at the moment. It's one reason why Vogue's inclusion of an AI model was such a shock. Bovell pondered if the ad was Vogue's way of testing how the world would react to merging high fashion with AI. So far the reaction hasn't been great. It's unclear if the magazine thinks it ride out the backlash. 'What Vogue does matters,' Odell said. 'If Vogue ends up doing editorials with AI models, I think that's going to make it okay. In the same way the industry was really resistant to Kim Kardashian and then Vogue featured her. Then it was okay.'
