ARK Invest Puts Its $1.3 Billion Venture Fund Onchain With Securitize

ARK Invest is moving its actively managed venture fund onto the Ethereum blockchain, tokenizing the roughly $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund, known as ARKVX, through infrastructure provider Securitize. It marks the first time any ARK Invest fund has been issued onchain, a step that pushes a mainstream asset manager’s private-market exposure directly into the world of tokenized finance.

From Wall Street Fund to Blockchain Token

ARKVX is not a typical exchange-traded product. It is an actively managed fund that holds stakes in a mix of private and public technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks. That combination of name-brand private equity exposure and fund-style management has made it a closely watched vehicle since its launch, and its tokenization changes how eligible investors can access and hold that exposure.

The move builds on a relationship that started well before this week’s announcement. ARK Invest made a strategic investment in Securitize in October 2025, positioning itself as both a client and a stakeholder in the tokenization infrastructure it now relies on. Securitize itself became a public company earlier in 2025 through a SPAC deal valued at $1.25 billion, trading under the ticker SECZ, and counts a roster of heavyweight financial names among its equity holders, including BlackRock, Blockchain Capital, Hamilton Lane, Jump Crypto and Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

That ownership structure matters. Securitize is not a niche startup experimenting on the margins of finance; it has become a preferred rails provider for some of the largest asset managers in the world as they test how traditional fund structures can be represented and transferred as digital tokens. ARK’s decision to route ARKVX through this same infrastructure places it alongside a growing list of institutions treating tokenization as a distribution and operations upgrade rather than a speculative side project.

What Onchain Issuance Actually Changes

Putting a fund onchain does not change what the fund owns. ARKVX will still be built around the same portfolio of private and public technology bets. What changes is the plumbing: ownership records, transfers and investor access can now run through blockchain-based infrastructure rather than solely through traditional fund administration systems. For a fund manager, that can mean faster settlement and record-keeping; for eligible investors, it can mean a different, potentially more flexible way of holding and moving their stake.

This fits a broader pattern that has been building across markets this year. Traditional exchanges and banks have been layering blockchain rails onto conventional products rather than waiting for entirely new crypto-native markets to emerge. The New York Stock Exchange’s tokenized stock arrangement with Blockchain.com is one example of a legacy venue pushing equities onto blockchain infrastructure. Banks have moved in parallel: British lenders recently completed the first interbank tokenized deposit transfers in the UK, showing that tokenization is no longer confined to crypto-native firms but is being adopted inside regulated financial plumbing itself.

ARK’s move is distinct from those examples in one important way: it is not tokenizing a public stock or a bank deposit, but an actively managed fund with exposure to private companies that are otherwise difficult for most investors to access. That is arguably a more ambitious test of tokenization’s promise, since it touches a corner of the market — private equity and venture-style investing — that has historically been the most illiquid and the least transparent.

Why This Signals Something Bigger

The significance here is less about the specific fund and more about what it says about institutional appetite for tokenized products generally. When an asset manager with ARK Invest’s public profile takes its flagship venture vehicle onchain, and does so through a partner it has also invested in directly, it suggests a level of conviction that goes beyond a marketing experiment. The involvement of Securitize’s other backers — a mix of asset managers, crypto-native venture firms and a major Wall Street investment arm — reinforces that this infrastructure is being built with long-term institutional use in mind, not just short-term novelty.

It also arrives amid a wider wave of tokenization announcements spanning multiple asset classes. Stablecoin infrastructure is seeing similar institutional momentum, with cross-border stablecoin flows climbing even as broader crypto markets soften, and companies like MoonPay moving to acquire regulated securities infrastructure to support tokenized offerings. Taken together, these moves point toward a financial system where tokenization is treated as standard back-office technology for legacy products, rather than a separate crypto category.

What to Watch Next

• Whether ARK Invest tokenizes additional funds beyond ARKVX now that the infrastructure is in place.
• How Securitize’s investor base, including BlackRock and Morgan Stanley Investment Management, engages with the platform following this listing.
• Regulatory treatment of tokenized private-market funds as more asset managers test similar structures.
• Whether other venture or private-equity fund managers follow ARK’s lead in issuing shares onchain.

Source: The Block

This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.