ARK Invest has tokenized its ARK Venture Fund through Securitize on Ethereum, giving eligible investors a blockchain-based way to hold an interest in a portfolio that includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks. The move, announced Sept. 24 by Securitize and ARK Invest, marks one of the highest-profile conversions of a mainstream investment vehicle into an onchain tokenized format to date.
According to the announcement, eligible investors accessing ARKVX through Securitize can hold a tokenized interest in the actively managed fund. Securitize provides the systems for issuing those interests on Ethereum and managing the investor experience, while ARK’s managers retain full control over how the portfolio is allocated.
Fund-level exposure, not direct tokenized equity
ARK Venture Fund invests in both private and public companies. Its named holdings include OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks — but buying into ARKVX does not give an investor direct ownership of shares in any of those businesses. The tokenized interest represents an investment in the fund itself, whose managers decide how to allocate capital across the portfolio, and the holdings may change as positions are bought and sold.
The fund operates as a continuously offered, closed-end interval fund. Under that structure, investors may buy shares on an ongoing basis, while the fund makes periodic offers to repurchase them. ARK’s fund disclosures warn that investors should not expect to sell their shares whenever they choose, and repurchase offers can receive more requests than the fund agrees to meet.
Those limits matter for the Ethereum rollout. Recording a fund interest on a blockchain does not, by itself, create an open market for the shares. Securitize said in its announcement that ARKVX shares are not listed on a securities exchange and that no secondary market is expected to develop. Access through Securitize remains subject to investor eligibility and other restrictions.
SEC order clears the tokenized share class
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved an amended order for ARK Venture Fund on Sept. 21. It permits the fund to offer a tokenized share class that may trade on one or more alternative trading systems or be quoted through other permitted channels. The order also permits a separate class that could be listed on a national securities exchange, with each class remaining subject to the conditions in ARK’s application.
Earlier in September, ARK had applied to the SEC to approve a tokenized share class for the venture fund, proposing to use blockchain technology to record ownership of the new class. The application sought a change to relief the SEC had granted in November 2025. At that stage, ARK had not identified the blockchain or the provider it would use; the new announcement names Ethereum and Securitize.
The SEC said no one requested a hearing after it published notice of ARK’s application. The Sept. 21 order took effect immediately, though the regulator’s permission to offer the classes does not establish that shares are already trading on an alternative trading system. Securitize’s announcement describes the tokenized fund’s availability to eligible investors through its platform.
ARK’s SEC application sets out how purchases from the fund would work. An investor buying directly from ARK would pay the applicable share class’s net asset value plus any sales or distribution charge. Once the investor’s funds clear and the fund accepts the purchase, the investor becomes a shareholder, including for tax purposes. The application also notes that costs specific to a tokenized class could include transfer-agent charges and blockchain transaction fees.
A deepening ARK-Securitize relationship
ARK’s choice of Securitize follows a strategic investment announced in October 2025, when the companies said they would work together on regulated tokenized investment products and the systems used to issue them. ARK Venture Fund also held Securitize equity and a 10 million USD convertible note, according to ARK’s filing reviewed in an earlier report.
Securitize has since pursued a public listing. An October 2025 report detailed its agreement to combine with a Cantor Fitzgerald-backed special purpose acquisition company alongside a planned 225 million USD private investment, with ARK Invest among the company’s existing backers. Securitize’s Sept. 24 announcement identifies the company by its New York Stock Exchange ticker SECZ.
Cathie Wood, ARK’s founder, CEO and chief investment officer, said the tokenization puts the firm’s view of changing capital markets into practice. She said ARK’s research points to potential changes in how investors access private and public markets, presenting the onchain fund as one way to pursue that thesis.
Why tokenized funds matter
Tokenized funds like ARKVX represent a growing intersection between traditional asset management and blockchain infrastructure. By recording fund interests on Ethereum, issuers can potentially streamline transfer agency, settlement and record-keeping, while opening participation to a wider pool of eligible investors through digital platforms.
The structure also illustrates the current limits of tokenization. Because ARKVX is an interval fund with periodic repurchase windows and no expected secondary market, the token’s liquidity remains tied to the fund’s own terms rather than to continuous blockchain trading. Investors gain onchain representation of ownership, not onchain freedom to exit.
Separately, the SEC has granted five years of conditional relief for qualifying venues to trade tokenized versions of certain U.S.-listed stocks, addressing tokenized shares of individual companies on specified trading venues. ARK’s venture fund received its amended order through an Investment Company Act application covering the fund’s share classes — a distinct regulatory pathway that reflects how tokenization is spreading across different asset categories.
For now, ARKVX stands as a benchmark case: a venture fund with exposure to the most closely watched private AI companies in the world, wrapped in a token issued on Ethereum under explicit SEC permission. How much demand that combination attracts from eligible investors will be one of the more telling data points for the tokenized fund sector’s next phase of growth.
Tokenized exposure to OpenAI and Anthropic before any IPO. Cathie found another angle on the AI retail wave
its fund level interest tho, you dont actually hold OpenAI shares. read the fine print before aping into ARKVX
Securitize again. they are quietly becoming the transfer agent for basically every big tokenized fund on Ethereum
someone should count how much of tokenized RWAs runs through one company at this point. feels like a single point of failure nobody is pricing in
tokenized exposure to openAI, anthropic and stripe without a five million minimum, that is the real headline. the plumbing is just securitize doing securitize things
no secondary market and no exchange listing though. you are basically locked in unless securitize finds you a buyer. read the fine print before celebrating
same as every Securitize issuance tho. the transfer agent has to bless any resale anyway, thats what the eligibility rules are for
Cathie keeps full allocation control either way, so holding ARKVX is really a bet she outperforms the VC funds marking OpenAI near half a trillion
buying a Cathie basket to get indirect OpenAI exposure is a very 2026 sentence lol