Yieldstreet investors lost $208M as the firm scrubbed its record and rebranded

Yieldstreet — the retail alternative-investing startup that promised higher returns with lower volatility — rebranded as Willow Wealth in late 2025 as customer losses mounted. Weeks after the rebrand it told customers of new defaults on real estate projects in Houston and Nashville worth about $41 million, on top of $89 million in marine loan wipeouts disclosed in September and $78 million reported by CNBC in August — at least $208 million in total, per CNBC.

The company also removed a decade of historical performance data from public view; a chart showing annualized returns of negative 2% for real estate from 2015 to 2025 — down from 9.4% gains two years earlier — was taken down. 'They had to change their name,' said Boston University professor Mark Williams. 'Their old name had negative value to it... They're also making it harder to uncover their poor performance by removing the stats, which is alarming.' A Willow Wealth spokeswoman called CNBC's reporting a 'rehash' of five-year-old investments.

The new pitch kept the old logic: a mascot called Hampton Dumpty tells viewers that 'portfolios including private markets have outperformed traditional ones for the past 20 years', and a website chart comparing private-market portfolios with stocks and bonds excludes fees — typically about 2% annually on unreturned funds for its real estate offerings, ten times a typical stock ETF, per product documents. New CEO Mitch Caplan, the former E-Trade chief, said the company would also sell funds from Goldman Sachs, Carlyle and StepStone, with its own about 1.4% annual access fee on top.

At least $208M in customer losses: $78M reported in Aug, $89M marine wipeouts in Sept, $41M Houston/Nashville defaults; RE returns at -2% annualized

Yieldstreet sold retail investors opaque, illiquid private deals — real estate and marine loans — that customers could neither trade out of nor independently monitor.

Cumulative losses of at least $208 million gave the brand what one professor called negative value, forcing a rebrand rather than a repair.

Rather than publish the record, the company withdrew a decade of performance data, including the chart showing negative 2% real estate returns.

Fees of roughly 2% a year plus deal charges compounded on locked-up capital, and the new marketing charts omitted fees entirely.

A brand can be renamed but not reset: taking down the performance record that justified the old pitch reads as concealment, and the investors' losses stay exactly where they were.

Willow Wealth declined to say how much it manages. Caplan is steering it toward reselling Wall Street funds rather than sourcing its own deals; founders Michael Weisz and Milind Mehere remain on the board. CNBC's tally of customer losses stood at $208 million and counting as of December 2025.