Cathie Wood's ARK Puts Venture Fund Onchain via Securitize

ARK Invest has tokenized its ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) through Securitize Corp. (NYSE: SECZ), putting one of Cathie Wood's flagship strategies onchain for the first time. The firm announced the move on 24 September.

Tokenized interests in the fund are available initially on Ethereum. Securitize handles the onchain issuance and the investor experience. The move reflects a shared conviction between the two firms that tokenization can modernize how investment products are accessed, owned, and managed.

What the fund holds

ARKVX is an actively managed, closed-end interval fund investing across private and public companies aligned with disruptive innovation. The portfolio includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks, among others. Eligible investors who access the fund through Securitize gain exposure to leading private technology companies through blockchain-based infrastructure. Fund holdings are subject to change.

ARK, which Wood founded in 2014 and headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, focuses solely on disruptive innovation. The firm targets large-scale opportunities across artificial intelligence, robotics, energy storage, and blockchain technology.

There are structural caveats for investors. As an interval fund, ARKVX offers limited liquidity through periodic repurchase offers. Its shares are not listed on an exchange. The tokenized interests represent a stake in the fund itself, not direct ownership of the underlying companies.

Why ARK is going onchain

Wood positioned the tokenization as a practical extension of ARK's thesis on capital markets. "Tokenizing the $ARK Venture Fund puts our conviction in the evolution, if not revolution, of capital markets into practice," said Wood, ARK's founder, CEO and chief investment officer. "Making the $ARK Venture Fund available onchain is a natural extension of our mission to democratize access to technologically enabled disruptive innovation."

Securitize co-founder and CEO Carlos Domingo framed the launch as proof that established managers can move existing products onto modern rails. "Bringing ARKVX onchain demonstrates how leading asset managers can use tokenization to move established investment products onto modern capital markets infrastructure," he said.

A widening institutional push

The tokenization follows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading. It also extends Securitize's regulatory footprint. In September, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai's VARA.

Securitize reports roughly $5 billion in assets under management as of August. The company says it is the only firm operating regulated digital-securities infrastructure in both the U.S. and the EU. Its partners include Apollo, BlackRock, BNY, Hamilton Lane, KKR, and VanEck.

For ARK, the deal puts an actively managed portfolio of hard-to-access private tech names onto rails that promise faster settlement and broader distribution. For Securitize, landing one of the most recognizable names in thematic investing strengthens its case that tokenization has moved from pilot projects to production. The question now is whether other venture-focused managers follow ARK onto public blockchains.