After negotiating to manage the post-IPO wealth of hundreds of SpaceX employees, Chicago-based RIA Choreo is looking to do the same for two AI giants ahead of their planned public offerings.
“We continue to see momentum after the IPO. We have a cohort of several 100 individuals that we have had conversations with [including] SpaceX alumni, SpaceX current employees, and we're now expanding those conversations into employees of other pre-IPO firms with Anthropic, OpenAI, and others soon to follow,” Choreo CEO Jason Van de Loo told InvestmentNews.
Choreo, which manages more than $28 billion in client assets, was reported last month to have secured a group of 100 current and former SpaceX employees as clients amid the company’s historic IPO valued at $1.77 trillion. The SpaceX employee group reportedly negotiated an annual management fee of under 0.5% from Choreo, which competed with other RIAs such as Creative Planning and Corient for clients from SpaceX, according to Bloomberg.
“What has started with a cohort of SpaceX alumni and SpaceX employees, we're excited to expand over time to other employees who need the same kind of help with the same kind of complicated situations,” said Van de Loo. “So good momentum out of the gate with this initial group. That group continues to grow week by week as more people learn of Choreo, and are wrestling with the implications post-IPO, and we expect it to grow beyond SpaceX over time.”
Choreo has added $2 billion in assets under management through acquisitions so far this year, most recently announcing this week that it bought Resource Financial Group, a $700 million Illinois-based RIA. Choreo is majority owned by Chicago-based private equity firm Parthenon Capital, which bought the wealth management arm of CPA firm RSM US in 2022 before renaming that RIA business as Choreo. Van de Loo sees Choreo’s accounting background as a match for prospective clients from private companies going through an IPO.
“We feel like we're in a really unique position, given our roots in public accounting, that we've dealt with pre-transaction and post-transaction planning for years. We've dealt with concentrated positions, we've dealt with the tax complications of an IPO or event like this, with the estate planning complications,” said Van de Loo. “So it's a tailor-made opportunity for Choreo’s value proposition and for the strength of our advisors.”
Both Anthropic and OpenAI have sent paperwork to the SEC for planned IPOs with potential valuations of around $1 trillion apiece. The New York Times has reported that OpenAI is leaning towards waiting until 2027 to IPO, while Anthropic has reportedly been targeting an IPO for as early as this October.
Anthropic is the maker of Claude while OpenAI makes ChatGPT. Claude has pulled away as the enterprise AI model of choice for wealth management firms, as evidenced by Anthropic’s partnerships with Rockefeller Capital Management, Janus Henderson, CAIS, LPL and Orion.
As AI becomes increasingly embedded into advisor workflows, Van de Loo is noticing that clients are also being influenced by AI ahead of their meetings with advisors. This has been particularly prevalent with clients from SpaceX and other employees from other tech companies.
“These are highly educated tech-savvy individuals whose first instinct might be to take their situation to prompt Claude or ChatGPT or otherwise, and then to bring the answers to an advisor for a second opinion,” said Van de Loo. “What we're able to do is help these employees realize that this is a lot more than just the transaction of the IPO, and it's a lot more than just finding a single investment product solution.”
Beyond the IPO transaction and investment management, Choreo emphasizes multi‑year planning around tax strategy, estate planning, charitable giving, concentrated stock risk, as well as career and life decisions after the liquidity event, and the emotional impact of sudden wealth.
“We have individuals bringing Claude into the conversation with our advisors and making it almost a three-way dialogue," said Van de Loo. “I think it's been fun for us. We're seeing the next generation of investor behavior, and it's helping us learn and helping us be sharper about how we adapt our own experience to incorporate that.”
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