A spinout from the family office for the billionaire owners of US construction giant Michels Corp. is expanding its public equities strategy with a fund focused on US infrastructure.
River1 Asset Management is launching a new actively managed exchange-traded fund investing in listed companies that support US physical infrastructure, according to a statement.
The Rebuild America ETF will allocate to as many as 25 companies and is due to begin trading on Wednesday under the ticker BUIL, the Milwaukee-based firm said in the statement. The Michels Family Office is putting up an undisclosed amount as an anchor investor.
“People like to invest with a family office, whether in real estate, a private equity fund or venture capital,” River1 Chief Executive Officer Tony Tagliapietra said in an interview, declining to give details on the ETF’s backers. “This way people can invest alongside the Michels Family Office.”
River1 joins a growing number of investors pouring money into US infrastructure as the artificial intelligence boom fuels demand for data centers and strains regional power grids.
The Michels family has spent more than six decades building pipelines, airports and seawalls through their namesake Wisconsin contracting business, putting them in a strong position to benefit from the recent surge in investment in the sector that underpins their fortune.
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Led by Patrick Michels, the son of the closely held company’s founder, the dynasty has a total net worth of at least $7.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Tagliapietra and fellow River1 executive Rob Haugen both hold separate C-suite roles at the Michels Family Office, which is also riding a recent boom in defense-tech bets.
“We’re doing this investing work internally,” Haugen, River1’s chief investment officer, said of the ETF strategy. “And external folks want to do similar things to us.”
ETFs have boomed in popularity over the past two decades, offering investors intraday trading, generally low costs and potential tax advantages over mutual funds. The ETF industry is on track for a record number of launches this year, while US-listed funds are headed for record annual inflows after taking in about $1 trillion in the first half.
External Pivot
Founded in 2024, River1 is among a rising number of billionaire-backed investment firms worldwide to open to outside money as they typically seek to scale up their operations and attract talent. Few, though, have turned to ETFs, typically preferring to raise capital from like-minded peers in private markets.
For Tagliapietra and Haugen, both 49, their ETF strategy draws on the equity-trading expertise they developed at Robert W. Baird & Co., where they spent almost four decades combined. They launched their first exchange-traded fund — the Trenchless Fund ETF, also anchored by the Michels Family Office — two years ago, creating a portfolio of US stocks that now includes Nvidia Corp., SoFi Technologies Inc. and EQT Corp.
That fund, which has $150 million in assets under management, was up almost 17% this year through Tuesday, outpacing the 11% return of the benchmark S&P 500 Index.
“Do we have a vision of multiple ETFs? Absolutely,” Tagliapietra said. “We’re obviously just focusing on these two now, and then we’ll take it from there.”
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