ARK Invest and Securitize announced on September 24, 2026 the tokenization of the ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX), bringing the actively managed fund’s holdings in private and public companies onto Ethereum with a minimum investment of just $500 in USDC.
ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said tokenizing the fund puts the firm’s conviction in the evolution, if not revolution, of capital markets into practice, according to the companies’ announcement.
Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said the move gives investors diversified exposure to popular private tech companies, letting them hold both OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously if they’re uncertain which will win the AI race. Each token is backed one-to-one by ARKVX shares held in custody at BNY Mellon, with an investor’s position held in their own wallet or a platform vault.
Securitize shared the launch through its official X account, framing the milestone as bringing ARK’s flagship disruptive-innovation fund onchain for the first time:
The ARK Venture Fund had approximately $1.3 billion in net assets as of June 30, 2026. The fund invests in companies aligned with ARK Invest’s disruptive-innovation strategy, including private and public businesses, and holdings can change over time.
What Tokenized ARKVX Offers Investors
ARKVX remains an actively managed closed-end interval fund even after tokenization. Securitize provides infrastructure for the onchain version while ARK Invest continues managing the portfolio, a model different from the venture-capital funds covered in a list of 11 blockchain venture capital firms.
| ARKVX Tokenization | Details |
| Fund | ARK Venture Fund |
| Net assets | ~$1.3B |
| Minimum investment | $500 in USDC |
| Blockchain at launch | Ethereum |
| Custody | BNY Mellon |
Table 1. Key details of the tokenized ARK Venture Fund.
ARK’s fund page reports Class D NAV returns of 84.75% over one year, 36.14% annualized over three years, and 33.33% since inception, all as of June 30, with NAV at $60.49 as of September 23. Its largest holdings include SpaceX at 7.54% and Kalshi at 5.81%, with OpenAI and Anthropic both in the top six.
ARKVX Grew Rapidly Before Moving Onchain
ARK’s fund materials reported approximately $557.6 million in net assets in January 2026 and $711.4 million as of March 31. By June 30, net assets had reached approximately $1.3 billion, more than doubling in the first half of the year, though this reflects subscriptions and redemptions as well as performance.
| ARKVX Reported Net Assets | Amount |
| January 2026 | ~$557.6M |
| March 31, 2026 | $711.4M |
| June 30, 2026 | ~$1.3B |
Table 2. ARK Venture Fund reported net assets during the first half of 2026.
That growth provides useful context: Securitize is bringing an already sizable vehicle onchain rather than creating a new fund specifically for blockchain investors.
Why Tokenization Doesn’t Create Unlimited Liquidity
ARKVX remains an interval fund even after its interests are tokenized. ARK’s redemption terms provide for quarterly repurchase offers of up to 5% of outstanding shares at NAV, meaning putting fund interests on a blockchain doesn’t automatically create a continuously traded secondary market comparable to an ETF, relevant to the broader institutional access patterns covered in how BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is changing institutional demand.
Blockchain-based ownership and market liquidity remain separate concepts, and the fund’s established repurchase terms continue to apply.
This Arrives Amid a Broader Tokenized-Securities Push
The launch lands three days after the SEC’s five-year Innovation Exemption for tokenized stock trading venues took effect, a related regulatory signal encouraging blockchain-native securities infrastructure.
Securitize itself listed on the NYSE under ticker SECZ in July 2026, tokenizing its own shares on the first day of trading, and its stock jumped as much as 15% following the ARKVX announcement.
The company reported approximately $5 billion in AUM as of August 2026, working with Apollo, BlackRock, BNY, Hamilton Lane, KKR, and VanEck, and previously launched a comparable tokenized fund with Neuberger Berman on August 18.
ARK and Securitize Extend an Existing Relationship
The tokenization follows ARK Invest’s strategic investment in Securitize announced in October 2025, when the companies said they intended to work together to advance institutional adoption of tokenized securities. The ARKVX launch turns that earlier relationship into a specific product deployment rather than creating an entirely new fund for blockchain users.
What Comes Next for Tokenized ARKVX
Tokenized ARKVX is initially available on Ethereum, with no additional blockchains or expansion timeline announced. The broader test will be whether other asset managers follow a similar model by placing existing private-market and alternative investment products onchain.
What this means for you: ARK Invest’s tokenization brings a roughly $1.3 billion venture fund onto Ethereum while preserving its underlying investment strategy and interval-fund structure. The key change is the format through which eligible investors access and manage their interests, not the creation of a new portfolio or an unrestricted secondary market.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. The ARK Venture Fund is a non-diversified closed-end interval fund. Its shares are not listed on a securities exchange, no secondary market is expected to develop, and liquidity remains subject to periodic repurchase offers that may be oversubscribed. Eligibility restrictions apply.
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