Cadre, an online investment marketplace, announced that it has closed $250 million in commitments from global investment banking company Goldman Sachs’ private wealth clients, a move that will enable Goldman Sachs’ private clients to easily invest in Cadre’s broad-based portfolio of commercial real estate assets.
Cadre holds itself up as “a smarter, data-centric approach to investing, enabling broader participation and better investor outcomes,” which is enabled through automated key investment processes and data science for a quick turnaround on analyzing individual assets and identifying market-level trends and opportunities.
Cadre also says the close is the beginning of an ongoing strategic partnership with Goldman Sachs, Cadre CEO and co-founder Ryan Williams’s former employer and one of the company’s lead investors.
“In today’s economic environment, investors need to be able to access an array of opportunities, including alternative investments, to enhance and differentiate their portfolios,” said Williams in a press release. “Our goal at Cadre is to drive progress in real estate investing by improving the quality of participation and our partnership with Goldman Sachs is an important step in delivering on this mission.”
“We are excited to be working together, and to provide Goldman’s clients with access to our platform and investments,” he added.
Beyond giving Goldman Sachs’ private wealth clients access to its portfolio of commercial real estate assets, Williams revealed in interviews with TechCrunch and Business Insider that the partnership will enable them to expand their platform to include assets like farmland, private equity investments and even credit.
Williams also noted that he plans to make Cadre accessible to a wider pool of investors. The current minimum investment is $100,000.
Lastly, TechCrunch suggested the partnership with Goldman Sachs’ could be a key part of Cadre’s rumored plan to create a platform where Cadre members can trade property stakes with each other. TechCrunch said Williams failed to confirm or deny the rumor, but he did say that expansion is the goal.
“We want to create trust with our core product offering,” he told TechCrunch. “But we ultimately plan to become a kind of superstore for alternative investments.”
This partnership comes after a $65 million Series C funding round in June 2017, bringing their total funding to $133,300,000 and company valuation to $805 million.
While the Cadre marketplace is primarily focused on commercial, Williams’ background includes billions of dollars in transactions across asset classes, including residential real estate, specifically at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, a Wall Street giant known for acquiring single-family rental homes. Last year, Cadre scooped up a suite of residential buildings, populated with millennials and retail stores, for $60 million.