UC Investments seeds $2.5B into new ETF as ProShares launches GENIUS Act-compliant fund

The University of California’s investment arm just wrote the biggest opening-day check in ETF history. UC Investments anchored the new State Street SPDR UC Investments 90/10 Endowment Strategy Index ETF (UCBG) with a $2.5 billion seed, making it the largest recorded institutional seeding for any US-listed exchange-traded fund.

Meanwhile, ProShares quietly built a different kind of monster. Its GENIUS Money Market ETF (IQMM), designed specifically to comply with the GENIUS Act of 2025, racked up roughly $17 billion in first-day volume when it launched back in February. The average day-one asset size for ETFs has doubled over the past five years, and these two funds are Exhibit A for why.

A university endowment strategy, now in ETF form

The UCBG fund, which launched September 2-3, mirrors UC’s Blue and Gold Endowment Pool. The recipe is deceptively simple: 90% goes into the S&P 500, and 10% lands in short-duration, investment-grade corporate bonds.

State Street Investment Management runs the fund, and UC Investments provided the anchor capital that instantly made UCBG one of the most well-capitalized ETFs at birth.

ProShares built an ETF for stablecoin plumbing

ProShares launched IQMM on February 17, 2026, as an actively managed ETF that invests exclusively in short-term US Treasury securities with maturities of 93 days or less. That 93-day ceiling isn’t arbitrary. It’s the reserve requirement threshold established by the GENIUS Act of 2025, which created a regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers.

The volume numbers were staggering. IQMM hit approximately $17 billion in first-day trading volume and has since expanded to roughly $20-22 billion in total volume within months of launch. Those figures come with an important caveat, though. A considerable share of the initial assets originated from within ProShares’ existing fund structures rather than fresh external cash from stablecoin producers or other outside investors.

The bigger picture: ETFs are launching heavier

The stat that average day-one ETF sizes have doubled over the past five years captures this shift neatly. Larger seeds mean better liquidity from the start, tighter bid-ask spreads, and more credibility with the kind of institutional allocators who won’t touch a fund with less than a certain asset threshold.