A $1.3 Billion Venture Fund Gets an Ethereum Wrapper
Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest is taking a fund stuffed with some of technology’s most closely watched private companies and putting its ownership infrastructure on Ethereum. The $ARK Venture Fund, or ARKVX, had grown to roughly $1.3 billion in assets by late June and holds stakes in companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks.
On Thursday, Ark Invest and Securitize announced that eligible investors will be able to access a tokenized version of the fund through Securitize. However, investors aren’t suddenly getting blockchain-native OpenAI or Anthropic shares; they’re getting an onchain representation of interests in the fund that owns them.
What Actually Goes Onchain
Securitize will handle ARKVX’s onchain issuance and investor infrastructure, with the tokenized fund launching on Ethereum. In plain English, the blockchain layer changes how eligible investors can hold and interact with their fund interest, not what sits inside the portfolio. That distinction matters because ARKVX isn’t an ETF. Originally launched on Sept. 23, 2022, it is an actively managed closed-end interval fund built to hold both private and public companies.
Its target mix is roughly 80% private and 20% public, and investors generally can’t simply dump shares whenever they please. The fund instead offers quarterly repurchase windows for about 5% of outstanding shares, with requests subject to proration if too many investors head for the exit at once.
Cathie Wood Puts the Tokenization Bet Into Practice
“Tokenizing the $ARK Venture Fund puts our conviction in the evolution, if not revolution, of capital markets into practice,” said Cathie Wood, founder, CEO and CIO of $ARK Invest. “Based on our research, tokenization has the potential to reshape fundamentally the way that investors access and participate in both private and public financial markets.”
The Ark Invest founder added:
“Making the $ARK Venture Fund available onchain is a natural extension of our mission to democratize access to technologically enabled disruptive innovation. Because it has built the regulated infrastructure to help make that vision a reality, we are excited to partner with Securitize in taking this important step forward.”
Wood’s Ark Invest had already invested strategically in Securitize in October 2025, so Thursday’s move didn’t exactly come out of the blue. The latest move turns that relationship into an operating product.
The Fund Had Quite a Run Before Going Onchain
ARKVX’s NAV began near $20 and stood around $60.50 on Sept. 23, 2026, roughly tripling since inception before accounting for share-class and distribution differences. The ride wasn’t smooth, however. Approximate NAV returns were 61% in 2023, 7% in 2024, 56% in 2025, and around 32% so far this year through late September.
The fund also carries a roughly 2.90% net expense ratio and limited liquidity, while valuations of private holdings can move sharply when companies raise new money. On the other hand, that same private-company exposure helped ARKVX post a 20.21% return in the second quarter of 2026, with Ark Invest identifying firms like SpaceX and Anthropic as its biggest contributors.
Now, a fund built partly around companies pushing technology into unfamiliar territory is getting its own technological wrapper. The assets inside remain the same. The rails around them are changing.