401(k) Alternative Assets: What Executive Order 14330 Means for Your Retirement

For decades, 401(k) plans have been limited to a narrow set of investment options: mutual funds, target-date funds, and a handful of conventional investment products. Alternative assets like private equity, infrastructure funds, and real asset funds were effectively walled off from ordinary investors. Executive Order 14330, signed in August 2025, is designed to change that.

Alexander Green’s ASI Fund presentation from The Oxford Club connects EO 14330 to a specific investment opportunity: the ASI Fund, a picks-and-shovels vehicle targeting AI infrastructure that you can access “for less than $15.” The presentation argues that this regulatory shift opens the door for ordinary investors to access the kinds of investments that made Mitt Romney and Peter Thiel wealthy.

What EO 14330 Does

Executive Order 14330 is titled “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors.” It directs the Department of Labor to clarify that plan fiduciaries may include professionally managed alternative-asset funds in 401(k) lineups. Before this order, plan sponsors were concerned that including alternative assets could expose them to liability under ERISA, the law that governs retirement plans.

The order does not mandate that any specific 401(k) plan offer alternative assets. It does not guarantee that your employer’s plan will add an alternative-asset fund. What it does is remove the regulatory uncertainty that kept plan sponsors from including these funds. The practical effect is that over time, more retirement plans will offer professionally managed alternative-asset funds as part of their investment menus.

For more on the executive order itself, see our EO 14330 article. For more on the broader category, see our alternative assets article.

The Romney and Thiel Precedents

Green uses two well-documented cases to illustrate the power of alternative assets inside tax-advantaged retirement accounts:

Mitt Romney turned a $450,000 IRA into $100 million. The IRA grew to extraordinary value because the alternative investments inside it, primarily private equity deals through Bain Capital, compounded tax-free over many years. This is a well-documented case that was widely reported during Romney’s presidential campaigns. It is an extraordinary outlier, not a typical outcome.

Peter Thiel turned $2,000 into $5 billion inside his Roth IRA. Thiel bought early shares of PayPal in his Roth IRA and let them compound tax-free. Also well-documented, also an extraordinary outlier.

Green acknowledges this: “I can’t promise you’ll see anything near this level of return. But this is what’s possible.” The examples illustrate the power of putting high-growth assets inside a tax-advantaged account. They are not projections of what the ASI Fund will do.

The ASI Fund Connection

The ASI Fund is the specific investment vehicle Green recommends. ASI stands for “Artificial Superintelligence,” and the fund targets AI infrastructure: data centers, semiconductors, power generation, and cooling solutions. Green says you can “get in for less than $15” through a regular brokerage account, and potentially through a 401(k) plan that has added alternative-asset funds to its lineup.

The connection between EO 14330 and the ASI Fund is the core of Green’s thesis: the executive order opens the regulatory door, the fund provides the investment vehicle, and the low minimum makes it accessible to ordinary investors. This is a legitimate structural shift, even if the “act now” urgency in the presentation is a standard marketing technique. For more on the fund, see our ASI Fund article.

The AI Infrastructure Backdrop

The ASI Fund targets AI infrastructure at a moment when the buildout is accelerating:

  • The Stargate project is deploying $100 billion to build AI data centers.
  • Meta is building a Manhattan-sized data center.
  • Amazon’s Project Blue is under construction.
  • ChatGPT alone uses enough power to run 180,000 American homes every day.
  • OpenAI filed an S-1 for a September listing at a $1 trillion-plus valuation.

These are verifiable facts. The AI infrastructure buildout is happening right now, and the capital being deployed is unprecedented. A fund that captures the physical backbone of this buildout is a reasonable way to participate. For more on the infrastructure thesis, see our AI infrastructure fund article.

The Trump Connection

Green opens the presentation with Trump’s alternative investment income: “While President Trump’s official salary is $400,000 per year, his tax returns reveal he’s been collecting up to an additional $250,000 per month from one hidden source.” The source is alternative investments. Trump reportedly invested up to $25 million of his own money in the kinds of assets the ASI Fund targets.

EO 14330 was signed by Trump, which Green frames as Trump opening the door for ordinary investors to access the same kinds of investments that made him wealthy. The political angle is strong, but the investment thesis does not depend on politics.

Considerations

The democratization of alternative assets is a genuine structural shift. EO 14330 is real, the ASI Fund concept is sound, and the AI infrastructure buildout is happening now. The risks are the usual ones: the Romney and Thiel examples are extreme outliers, the “get in for less than $15” framing oversimplifies fund mechanics, and the “act now before Wall Street catches on” urgency is manufactured. The executive order does not expire, and the fund is not going away.

For the full analysis, see our ASI Fund review. For more on Green himself, see our Alexander Green profile.

If you want to explore the full thesis, you can access the ASI Fund presentation through The Oxford Club.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.