Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest has moved to put a slice of Silicon Valley’s most sought-after private companies onto the Ethereum blockchain. Through a partnership with tokenization platform Securitize, ARK will offer a digital token share class of its ARK Venture Fund, giving eligible investors blockchain-based exposure to a portfolio that includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX. The move, announced September 24 under an SEC order dated September 21, marks one of the most closely watched extensions yet of asset tokenization beyond stablecoins and money-market products into venture-style private equity.
A fund built on scarce access
The ARK Venture Fund has always been an unusual vehicle. Launched in September 2022 with a minimum investment of just $500, it was designed to let everyday investors buy into companies that normally require accredited-investor status, insider connections, or nine-figure check sizes. As of August 31, 78% of the fund’s portfolio sat in private, non-publicly traded companies — an unusually heavy tilt for a retail-accessible product. Reported positions include SpaceX at 7.54% of the fund, OpenAI at 5.26%, and Anthropic at 3.86%.
The fund is structured as an interval fund, a legal format distinct from an ordinary mutual fund or ETF. Interval funds only allow investors to redeem shares during periodic windows — in this case, quarterly — and those buyback offers can be oversubscribed, meaning not everyone who wants out can necessarily get out on schedule. There is normally no secondary market where shares can be resold in the interim. That illiquidity is the trade-off investors accept in exchange for access to private companies that don’t trade on any public exchange.
According to Bloomberg, the fund’s size has been reported at $1.3 billion, following a rapid expansion: net assets stood at $208 million in July 2025 and grew to $558 million by January 2026. The fund’s annual expense ratio, after fee waivers, is 2.9% — notably higher than a typical passive ETF, reflecting the operational complexity of valuing and holding private-company stakes.
What tokenization actually changes
The September 21 SEC order permits ARK to offer this tokenized share class in a way that may eventually trade on alternative trading systems — regulated but non-exchange venues that operate outside the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. In theory, that could chip away at the fund’s core liquidity problem by creating a venue where token holders can transact with each other, rather than waiting solely on quarterly buyback windows. In practice, no secondary market is guaranteed to emerge, and the underlying interval-fund structure — including its redemption limits — remains unchanged. Tokenization here is a settlement and record-keeping upgrade layered onto an existing regulated fund, not a new asset class or a bypass of securities law.
This is not Securitize’s first attempt at putting institutional-grade fund assets on-chain. The firm tokenized BlackRock’s BUIDL fund on Ethereum in March 2024, a product that helped establish the template for regulated, on-chain money-market exposure. ARK has since deepened its relationship with Securitize, making a strategic investment in the company in October 2025 — a signal that ARK views tokenization infrastructure as core to its long-term strategy rather than a one-off experiment. The timing also follows a broader regulatory thaw: the SEC opened a path for tokenized stock trading on September 17, just days before the ARK order, suggesting the agency is incrementally building out a framework for on-chain securities rather than treating each filing as an isolated case. That regulatory posture echoes recent SEC staff guidance clarifying when token buybacks alone don’t create a security, part of a wider pattern of the agency drawing clearer lines around tokenized products.
For readers, the significance lies less in the token itself and more in what it represents: a regulated bridge between private-market venture investing and blockchain rails, built by a fund that already had a retail-friendly, low minimum-investment structure. It does not change the fundamental risk profile of holding early-stage stakes in companies like OpenAI or SpaceX, nor does it guarantee tradability. What it does is place those holdings under a settlement system that, if secondary markets develop as intended, could someday offer more flexibility than the fund’s current quarterly redemption cycle.
What to watch next
- Whether an actual alternative trading system begins listing the tokenized shares, and what liquidity — if any — materializes there.
- How the SEC’s broader tokenized-stock framework, opened September 17, evolves for other fund sponsors beyond ARK and BlackRock.
- Whether Securitize expands its tokenization pipeline to other private-market or venture funds following this template.
- Any changes to the fund’s private-company weightings, expense ratio, or net asset growth as the tokenized share class rolls out.
The broader push toward on-chain finance continues to unfold alongside ongoing debates in Washington over crypto market structure, including the collapse of a Senate crypto market structure bill amid unrelated political disputes, and technical discussions about where the underlying blockchain infrastructure is headed, as outlined in Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s roadmap through 2030. Both threads matter for anyone watching whether tokenized funds like ARK Venture become a durable feature of U.S. markets or remain a niche experiment.
Source: BeInCrypto
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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