Open Wealth Network

Open Wealth Network

Michael Kraines launched Open Wealth Network in 2018 after a 20-year career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, where he advised family offices and institutional clients on private market allocations. The firm's central premise is that the traditional GP-LP model leaves mid-tier family offices and RIAs with limited access to top-tier alternative investments; Open Wealth Network addresses that by acting as a digital deal-flow platform that curates and distributes secondary stakes, direct co-investments, and fund commitments. Open Wealth Network targets illiquid asset classes including private equity buyout funds, venture capital, private credit, and real estate. The firm sources its own deal flow by maintaining a network of over 200 family offices and institutional allocators that contribute capital to individual transactions. Confirmed deployments include a secondary purchase of a stake in a $1.5 billion mid-market buyout fund and a direct co-investment alongside a global infrastructure manager. Geographic focus is primarily North America with select European and Asian co-investments. The firm employs fewer than 15 professionals across its New York headquarters, operating with a lean technology-driven team. In January 2023, Open Wealth Network closed a $300 million secondary fund dedicated to purchasing LP stakes in older private equity vintages (per The Wall Street Journal, January 2023). The firm also runs a philanthropic arm, Open Wealth Foundation, established in 2020 to support financial literacy programs in underserved communities. Open Wealth Network's structural differentiator is its hybrid marketplace model — it does not raise traditional blind-pool funds but instead structures individual SPVs around each deal, allowing LPs to choose their exposure. This approach reduces the lock-up and fee drag characteristic of closed-end funds, while still offering institutional-quality diligence and aggregation power. The model effectively turns Open Wealth Network into a curated exchange for private assets, with a governance structure that limits the CEO's commitment authority to $10 million per deal without LP approval.