Nashville-based Alto, a marketplace and custodian connecting retirement capital with private market opportunities, has launched Alto Private Deal Room for registered investment advisors.
The new platform allows RIAs to execute self- and client-sourced private market deals, with custody, compliance, and execution all managed end-to-end through a single system.
Alto founder and CEO Eric Satz said the launch “marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter in retirement investing,” adding the platform will unlock opportunities for advisors, investors, and the broader private markets ecosystem.
The Private Deal Room enables advisor clients to fund private investments through qualified retirement assets, with Alto managing the custodial and transactional processes for holding eligible private investments in retirement accounts.
Advisors can oversee client accounts, cash balances, transfers, and private investments through a centralized digital platform, streamlining what has historically been a fragmented and manual process for retirement-focused private market investing.
In a separate development, SEI and WTW Investments expanded their strategic relationship to support the development of private market solutions for the 401(k) and broader U.S. defined-contribution market.
The partnership combines WTW’s investment research and portfolio implementation capabilities with SEI’s trust and platform capabilities through SEI Trust Company, a provider of trustee, operational, and administrative services for collective investment trusts.
Christy Loop, head of U.S. Wealth and Strategic Initiatives at WTW, noted that “a key challenge for defined contribution plans is ensuring sponsors have the right wrapper, structure and terms to integrate diversifying exposures like private credit.”
WTW will provide investment and operational due diligence and research support for private markets strategies used in retirement-focused CIT and evergreen solutions, while also collaborating with SEI on the design of new products and structures.
Houston-based alternative investment firm CAZ Investments has made two of its funds available on SoFi Invest, broadening retail access to strategies previously reserved for high-net-worth individuals.
Christopher Zook, founder and chief investment officer of CAZ Investments, said regulatory changes in 2025 allowed the firm to expand access to virtually all investors, with SoFi Invest providing the simplicity and convenience expected from a modern investment platform.
The CAZ funds available through SoFi Invest offer exposure to GP stakes in leading alternative asset management firms, professional sports franchises, AI and energy infrastructure, and the modernization of the space and defense industries.
Meanwhile, Diald, an AI-powered real estate due diligence and underwriting platform, announced $1 million in follow-on funding led by Feedback Ventures, bringing total funding to $4.75 million.
The capital raise coincides with a rebuilt interface and the launch of a proprietary Neighborhood Investment Rating, which uses media analysis and AI agents to measure optimism or pessimism surrounding a given area based on underlying data.
Steven Song, founder and CEO of Diald, described the problem the platform addresses, saying that for family offices and independent investors, evaluating a property feels like “finding a needle in a haystack” without an institutional research team.
Diald’s platform allows users to describe a deal in plain language, after which the system assembles a pro forma, populates assumptions from live market data, and scans more than 1.7 million data sources including licensed data from Moody’s Analytics, Green Street, and LightBox.
To date, the platform has analyzed more than $210 billion in commercial real estate volume, underscoring the scale of institutional and private investor interest in AI-driven property underwriting tools.
