ARK Invest tokenizes venture fund with OpenAI exposure

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 and Anthropic. ARKVX holds private and public technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks. Securitize will handle the fund’s onchain issuance and investor access, beginning on Ethereum. Investors receive an interest in the fund, rather than tokens representing its portfolio companies. A Sep. 21 SEC order permits ARK to offer a tokenized share class under specified conditions. According to a Sep. 24 announcement from Securitize and ARK Invest, eligible investors accessing ARKVX through Securitize can hold a tokenized interest in the actively managed fund. Securitize will provide the systems for issuing those interests on Ethereum and managing the investor experience. ARK said the fund’s holdings may change as its managers buy and sell investments. ARKVX gives investors fund-level exposure to private tech 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 one of those businesses. The tokenized interest represents an investment in the fund, whose managers decide how to allocate its portfolio. The fund is 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. Repurchase offers can also 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. In its announcement, Securitize said 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. 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 view. SEC order allows ARK to offer a tokenized share class The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved an amended order for ARK Venture Fund on Sep. 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. Each class remains subject to the conditions in ARK’s application. Earlier in September, crypto.news covered ARK’s application, which proposed using blockchain technology to record ownership of the new class. The application sought a change to the 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. Its Sep. 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 says costs specific to a tokenized class could include transfer-agent charges and blockchain transaction fees. Separately, the SEC has granted five years of conditional relief for qualifying venues to trade tokenized versions of certain U.S.-listed stocks. That order addresses 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. Securitize builds on its existing ARK relationship ARK’s choice of Securitize follows a strategic investment announced in October 2025. The companies said at the time that they would work on regulated tokenized investment products and the systems used to issue them. ARK Venture Fund also held Securitize equity and a $10 million convertible note, according to ARK’s filing reviewed in the earlier crypto.news 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 private investment. The report identified ARK Invest among the company’s existing backers. Securitize’s Sep. 24 announcement identifies the company by the New York Stock Exchange ticker SECZ. For ARKVX, the immediate arrangement keeps ARK in charge of the fund’s investments while Securitize supplies the tokenization systems. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo described the launch as bringing an established ARK investment product onto onchain infrastructure. The companies said Ethereum would support the tokenized fund at release.