CEO Dr. Najam Kidwai Highlights New Investments, Progress Toward Potential Public Listings Among Portfolio Companies, and Share Repurchase Activity

C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE:CFND) ("C1 Fund" or the "Fund"), a publicly traded closed-end fund providing investors with exposure to a curated portfolio of private late-stage digital asset services and technology companies, today issued a letter to shareholders from Dr. Najam Kidwai, Chief Executive Officer.

Dear Shareholders:

On August 7, 2025, C1 Fund became the first exchange-listed fund focused on digital asset services and technology companies, when its shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:CFND). We committed to building a portfolio drawn from the C1 30 Top Companies in Digital Assets. From our initial public offering net proceeds of $53.3 million, through June 30, 2026, the Company deployed approximately $41.3 million in assets across 11 portfolio companies.

Our strategy is focused on investing in secondary shares of larger, late-stage private companies operating in digital asset services and technology. Investments are selected from a defined universe of leading companies (the "C1 30"), based on availability in secondary markets and expected return potential. To date, all of our portfolio company investments have been in this sector.

In 2026, we added Polymarket (Blockratize, Inc.), Fireblocks, Uphold, and BitGo, while also increasing positions in several of the companies we invested in 2025.

Our two largest portfolio exposures, as percentages of the Company’s net assets as of June 30, 2026, are Ripple Labs Inc. (17.49%), a global blockchain infrastructure company focused on cross-border payments and digital asset solutions, and Payward, Inc. (16.92%), the parent company of Kraken, one of the world’s largest digital asset exchanges serving retail, institutional, and enterprise clients.

Additional portfolio companies include:

Alchemy – A leading blockchain infrastructure platform providing developer tools and APIs powering Web3 applications.

Blockchain.com – One of the largest digital asset financial services platforms, offering wallets, trading, and institutional infrastructure.

Chainalysis – A blockchain intelligence company whose analytics software is widely used by financial institutions, enterprises, and government agencies.

ConsenSys – A leading Ethereum software company developing infrastructure, developer tools, and applications, including MetaMask.

Figment – A leading institutional staking infrastructure provider supporting proof-of-stake blockchain networks.

Polymarket – A leading decentralized prediction market platform that enables users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events.

Fireblocks – A leading digital asset custody and infrastructure platform enabling institutions to securely store, transfer, and issue digital assets.

Uphold – A global digital asset platform offering trading, payments, and multi-asset financial services across cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, and precious metals.

BitGo – A leading provider of institutional digital asset custody, wallet, and settlement infrastructure.

During the period, several portfolio companies progressed toward or completed liquidity events. Kraken and Blockchain.com have confidentially filed for initial public offerings. In January 2026, BitGo, Inc. completed its initial public offering. An early partial buyback of shares by Ripple yielded a 141.50% return to the Company on a portion of our Ripple investment in just over four months.

The Company remains focused on disciplined capital deployment and building long-term value through its portfolio of leading private digital asset companies. The companies in our portfolio continue to strengthen their market positions through expanding services and growing customer bases, rather than relying on the value of any single digital asset.

While the Company’s shares have, at times, traded below its net asset value, this reflects broader market conditions, limited trading volume, and the early stage of the Company’s development rather than changes in underlying portfolio performance. The Company activated the share buyback program approved by the board on January 29, 2026 and, as of July 23, 2026, had repurchased and retired 249,300 shares at an aggregate cost of $824,440.

Looking ahead, our core investment focus remains digital asset infrastructure, even as artificial intelligence (AI) creates new use cases and potential sources of demand for that infrastructure. We are seeing a growing convergence of digital asset infrastructure and AI. Payments and settlement provide one clear example of this convergence, but the opportunity extends across multiple layers of digital asset infrastructure.

As AI-driven commerce advances, autonomous "agents" will increasingly need to transact, pay, and settle at machine speed. We believe digital asset rails are well suited to support this type of activity, making AI-driven commerce a natural use case for digital asset infrastructure. More broadly, we view the AI-driven economy as a structural, multi-year source of demand for the types of digital asset infrastructure already represented in our portfolio, and we believe several of our portfolio companies are positioned to benefit as AI-driven commerce continues to grow.

Importantly, the convergence is already reflected in the portfolio. Several of our holdings operate in areas of digital asset infrastructure that can support AI-driven activity: Ripple in settlement, BitGo and Fireblocks in custody, Chainalysis in compliance and monitoring, and Kraken in exchange and liquidity. Each has significant standalone market presence today. In this sense, AI represents an additional demand driver for the infrastructure our portfolio companies already provide at scale, rather than a shift in the Company’s investment strategy.

Consistent with this approach, we remain focused on investing in leading private companies positioned to benefit from long-term adoption of digital financial infrastructure and on enabling everyday investors to participate in their growth.

Thank you for your continued support.

Dr. Najam Kidwai

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE:CFND)

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About C1 Fund Inc.

C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE:CFND) is the first publicly traded closed-end fund providing public-market investors with exposure to late-stage digital asset services and technology companies. The Fund is managed by C1 Advisors LLC and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

For more information about C1 Fund, please visit the Company’s website at www.c1fund.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.

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