30% of the world’s top billionaire art collectors are clients of Winston Artory Group (WAG). The company has a legacy of appraising over $100 billion in art and has tokenized another $2 billion. WAG is a technology platform leveraging blockchain at its core, operating at the forefront of intelligent art and collectibles stewardship.

However, historically, art and technology have mixed just about as well as do oil and water. This disconnect stems from several factors: 1) data in the art world is highly fragmented, yet comprehensive and reliable data is essential for building effective technology; 2) deliberate opacity gives certain market participants a competitive edge; and 3) historically, art entrepreneurs have lacked expertise in tech and finance, while tech and finance entrepreneurs have struggled due to a lack of understanding of art. Further, more than most industries, the global art market is built on and fueled by trust. It takes a uniquely specialized team and DNA to build a breakthrough business at the intersection of art and technology — something the world had never seen until Winston Artory Group.

Formed in 2025 through the merger of Winston Art Group and Artory, the company provides independent appraisals, data-backed advisory services and secure portfolio management solutions. Winston Artory Group champions innovation, security and objectivity to meet the complex needs of collectors, fiduciaries and institutions worldwide. WAG was founded by Elizabeth von Habsburg and Nanne Dekking, who combined bring more than 50 years of experience in art and tech and rank among the upper echelon of global art industry leaders. Elizabeth founded Winston Art Group, the largest independent art advisory and appraisal firm in the U.S. and was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Private Wealth. Nanne founded Artory and formerly was Vice Chairman and Worldwide Head of Private Sales for Sotheby’s. They’re among the most knowledgeable, connected and reputed art stewards in the world.

To start, one might ask: Why does art need blockchain? For us, the answer couldn’t be more obvious – provenance. Few things are more critical to a work of art’s value than its history: when it was created, who owned it and where it was shown – whether at The Met or in a Lower East Side gallery in the 1960s. These data points aren’t just details; they’re central to how art is valued over time.

The global art market is estimated to reach nearly $3 trillion by the end of 20261. Not only is the value of the market growing on an absolute basis, but the proportion of that wealth that is becoming financialized is also growing. More specifically: As luxury assets become part of the art and finance landscape, a larger portion of wealth will be managed by the sector. Approximately 63% of surveyed wealth managers [according to a 2022 report by Deloitte] have already integrated art into their wealth management offering. Put differently, wealth that has historically been passive - as a store of value or for entertainment - is becoming more active in nature. The simplest example of this is the rapid growth in recent years of art-backed lending (a core growth vertical for WAG), which has doubled in size over the last decade ($15bn —> $30bn in outstanding loans). This makes it all the more shocking when we consider the lack of technology adoption within the art world.

The most prominent success story at the intersection of art and technology is arguably Masterworks, which - with all due respect - sets a relatively low bar. For the global art market to achieve meaningful growth in the coming decade, it will need a true technology leader to drive that transformation. That’s precisely the opportunity for WAG. This vision is grounded in two key pillars: proprietary technology and data through Artory, and an unprecedented level of trust and expertise through Winston Art Group – all guided by industry leaders with unmatched networks and domain knowledge.

Trust in the art market is hindered by the lack of any centralized repository containing all catalogs and independent appraisals of artwork. There is no source of trustless truth; dating back to Bitcoin, trustless truth is precisely what the blockchain industry is built on. This lack of trust has limited the development of tech-enabled products to keep pace with broader market innovation. The art world is still stuck in the Stone Age. Technology built on unique, verifiable and trusted data can unlock the kinds of tools and services that other industries already take for granted – and Winston Artory Group is uniquely positioned to make that possible. It’s a business opportunity of truly massive scale.

WAG possesses the world’s leading proprietary art data set – uniquely non-replicable – spanning over $100 billion in value across 250,000 private transactions since 2010, along with more than 50 million public art records. Its tokenization capabilities generate tamper-proof, timestamped data that injects much-needed objectivity into an often opaque market. With the global brand strength of legacy Winston Art Group and cutting-edge technology across a proprietary database, tokenization engine and AI-driven analytics, WAG is uniquely positioned as an unmatched platform for collectors, fiduciaries and institutions – delivering a full-suite, intelligent solution for modern art and collectibles stewardship. WAG’s clients include the leading global art collectors, banks, wealth managers, insurance companies, museums, auction houses and more.

The legacy Winston brand serves as a trojan horse into which WAG sells next-gen, tech-enabled products and services to an established, rich global client base. An immediate fix to the cold start problem that plagues startups and any other competitor. What this platform looks like more specifically is:

• Data Software Services: real-time valuation tools, AI-driven analytics, and digital asset management solutions using WAG’s depth of expertise and unparalleled data analytics that empower clients to make informed decisions and maximize the potential of their collections (see: WAG Portfolio Manager shown below);

• Asset Management: tokenized investment funds offering investors diversified exposure to art, rare wines, whiskeys and more;

• Advisory & Appraisal: Winston’s legacy business supercharged by Artory’s tokenized object library and AI-driven analytics to allow these processes to both move more quickly and efficiently, plus be more (data-)informed. These services span appraisals for estate planning, family division, insurance, damage assessment, donations and art-as-collateral, as well as strategic guidance and advocacy for buying, selling, financing and managing every collecting category, tailored to meet clients’ unique goals and maximize value; and

• Tokenization: an advanced, data-rich tokenization engine serves as a tamper-proof ledger for all transaction and artwork data. While the core value – permanent, verifiable provenance – is simple yet powerful, tokenization also unlocks transformative possibilities: from enabling a digitally-native secondary marketplace that could (will) one day rival Sotheby’s and Christie’s, to laying the foundation for a next-generation art-backed lending platform.

  • Art-backed loans: tokenizing collateral data and providing real-time verification of an asset’s location and condition will both broaden the serviceable market for art-backed loans, as well as drive down the cost of capital to borrowers.

  • Secondary marketplace: a forthcoming digitally native, tokenized art marketplace will allow WAG to eliminate rent-seeking middlemen, replacing reliance on intermediaries with trust in verifiable technology. This shift can reduce the all-in transaction cost from over 30% to a much more fair platform take-rate of 5%-10%, while also delivering a significantly improved user experience.

While WAG’s SaaS platform, tokenized investment funds and appraisals & advisory business lines are expected to generate strong base revenue and a sticky, enjoyable one-stop-shop user experience, the tokenization vertical is where we see truly venture-scale return potential and is central to one of Strobe’s core investment theses: The Unbundling of Sotheby’s.

At a high-level this unbundling involves the evolution of market share away from a few expensive, gated and inefficient generalized marketplaces (Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Phillips in this case) to specialized vertical marketplaces that offer better user experiences for cheaper. Blockchains serve as open, trustless infrastructure that are also rich in data and act as the key enabler of these businesses. Another Strobe portfolio company, BAXUS, is unbundling the archaic alcohol distribution market with a revolutionary platform for spirits and wines built on the Solana blockchain.

Art-backed lending is a core pillar of WAG’s tokenization strategy. While WAG serves ultra-high-end clients (their first customer is in talks to borrow $150 million against select artworks) this is a more competitive segment of the market. The company primarily targets the underserved middle market, offering art collectors attractive loans collateralized by their collections. With deep in-house expertise spanning valuations, data, appraisals, insurance and a robust liquidation network (in cases of default), along with an unmatched industry rolodex, WAG is well-positioned to expand the serviceable market and capture a significant share of the overall market for art-backed lending. In this way WAG is increasingly transforming individuals’ portfolios from passive to active, providing significant value to otherwise neglected segments of a given portfolio.

Their tokenization engine will reduce the expected default rate on loans and bring down the cost of capital in art-backed lending, plus broaden the audience to whom they can lend, given a smarter data-driven underwriting framework and emphasis on transparency / verifiability (ie, the core value propositions of blockchains). The upper-end of the market is well serviced by private banks; however, smaller loans or those concentrated on specific niches generally experience difficulty borrowing (or are pushed to very high-cost private lenders). WAG is partnering with large capital allocators (eg, insurance companies and traditional asset managers) structured as joint ventures and is expected to generate 7-figures of annual lending revenue by YE26.

WAG is in the early stages of building a tokenized online art marketplace, with the bold ambition of eventually disrupting – and potentially displacing – the legacy auction houses. As younger generations increasingly favor digital experiences and the great baby boomer wealth transfer unfolds, the conditions are ripe for a new market leader to emerge. It’s not hard to imagine a future where buyers and sellers grow tired of paying 30% or more in combined commissions and premiums, which is the standard with traditional auction houses.

The opportunity is significant: if WAG captures just 2.5% of the $65 billion annual art market and charges a 5% seller’s commission (an 80%+ discount to incumbent fees) the company could generate over $80 million in annual revenue. WAG is uniquely positioned to win, thanks to its trusted brand, long-standing relationships with high-net-worth clients, in-house expertise and integrated services such as Lending and Analytics through its proprietary SaaS dashboard. These elements create a sticky platform-based experience that legacy players can’t easily replicate. Blockchain rails enable quicker and cheaper transactions, a robust data-driven UX and provide an added layer of verifiable trust that eliminates otherwise potential friction to adoption.

WAG has the ability to offer a far superior user experience. Its marketplace can harness proprietary data to deliver a rich, insight-driven interface – with features like smart analytics, market comps, historical bid/ask data and dynamic pricing charts – giving collectors and investors a modernized buying and selling experience that doesn’t exist today.

While some clients may always prefer the traditional route, there is substantial white space for innovation. No other company combines the right mix of talent, brand equity, trust, technology and proprietary data like WAG – positioning it to capture and lead a significant share of this market.

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In Q1 2025, Strobe led a $10m Series A financing to help catalyze the merger of Winston Art Group + Artory and joined the board of directors. Galaxy Digital, CMT Digital and the family office of legendary art collector Eijk van Otterloo also invested in the round. Proceeds will be used to make key hires and prioritize its emerging lending and data SaaS businesses, while also set the foundation for its forthcoming art marketplace.

Like all other value in the world, art will be tokenized. WAG will be the one tokenizing it, and in doing so, the company has the potential to become a generational business that reshapes the global art landscape. With an unrivaled combination of brand trust, deep expertise, a growing and irreplicable dataset and next-generation blockchain infrastructure, WAG is uniquely positioned to lead in a $3 trillion industry that still lacks a true technology leader.

WAG is building a one-stop platform where collectors can access insights into their portfolios, monitor market trends, obtain insurance and appraisals, seamlessly borrow against their collections and soon tap into a digitally native marketplace to discover, buy and sell art. WAG is steadily becoming the central hub for anyone who owns art — the place where value is understood, enhanced and transacted.

On the heels of two years of a global slowdown, the art market is starved for a technology leader to catalyze rapid growth over the next decade. WAG is uniquely positioned to play that role and Strobe, as the company’s lead investor, is excited and privileged to play a small role and have the opportunity to leave a permanent dent in the history of the art market.

The views expressed here are those of the individual Strobe Ventures LP (“Strobe”) personnel quoted and are not the views of Strobe or its affiliates. Certain information has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by Strobe. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, Strobe has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; Strobe has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein. Learn more about Strobe Ventures at strobe.fund.