Cathie Wood tokenizes $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund

Cathie Wood's ARK Invest has partnered with Securitize to tokenize its $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund on the Ethereum blockchain. The move, enabled by SEC approval for a tokenized share class, lowers the entry barrier to a $500 minimum buy-in using USDC. The fund holds stakes in major private tech firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. While the underlying assets remain private and lack a secondary market, the initiative represents a major step in Wall Street's push to bring traditional equities onchain.

Tokenization of the ARK Venture Fund

• ▪ARK Invest announced the tokenization of its $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund on September 24, 2026, marking the first time the firm has issued tokenized interests in one of its investment vehicles
• ▪ARK Invest and Securitize said the tokenized interests of the ARK Venture Fund will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain, with potential expansion to other blockchain networks in the future
• ▪The tokenization of the ARK Venture Fund followed approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to establish a tokenized share class within the fund

Partnership with Securitize

• ▪Securitize Corp. plans to provide a daily net asset value for the ARK Venture Fund and enable its tokenized interests to trade on blockchain-based markets
• ▪ARK Invest previously made a strategic investment of approximately $10 million in Securitize in late 2025
• ▪Securitize shares rose by up to 15% following the announcement of the ARK Venture Fund partnership on September 24, 2026

Subscription terms and liquidity

• ▪There is currently no secondary market for trading the tokenized interests of the ARK Venture Fund, locking investors into quarterly redemption windows
• ▪The ARK Venture Fund is a closed-end interval fund launched in 2022 that allows up to 5% of shares to be eligible for repurchase each quarter
• ▪Eligible investors who pass KYC and AML checks can subscribe to the tokenized ARK Venture Fund using USDC with a minimum buy-in of $500

Fund holdings and performance

• ▪The ARK Venture Fund holds stakes in prominent private and public technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, SpaceX, Kalshi Inc., and Databricks
• ▪The Class D shares of the ARK Venture Fund posted a 20.35% return in the second quarter of 2026, compared to a 15.20% gain for the S&P 500
• ▪As of June 30, 2026, approximately 62% of the ARK Venture Fund's holdings were allocated to private investments

Broader tokenization trends

• ▪Wall Street asset managers are increasingly tokenizing traditional financial products, with early efforts by BlackRock and Franklin Templeton focusing on U.S. Treasuries and money-market products
• ▪The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced a five-year 'innovation exemption' in September 2026 to facilitate the trading of tokenized U.S. stocks on blockchain venues
• ▪Citi analysts projected that tokenized securities could reach a market value of $5.5 trillion by the year 2030

Debatable claims

• ▪Tokenizing investment funds provides little benefit without an active secondary market
• ▪Daily valuations of private-market assets are inherently unreliable
• ▪Private equity is too illiquid to be suitable for tokenization