Cathie Wood's ARK Will Tokenize $1.3 Billion Venture Fund on Ethereum

ARK Invest plans to move its $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund onto a blockchain and make it available on Ethereum, with Securitize Corp. overseeing the transition. The move puts one of the most recognizable names in active asset management behind the tokenization of traditional funds.

The ARK Venture Fund, launched in 2022, is a closed-end interval vehicle that invests in both public and private companies. Its holdings include Anthropic, Kalshi Inc., Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Stripe Inc., according to the fund's website. ARK chose the interval fund, which trades under the ticker ARKVX, as its first tokenization target.

Tom Staudt, ARK Invest's president and chief operating officer, framed the decision as the product of a long internal effort. "This is a milestone that's been years and years in the making," Staudt said in an interview.

The choice of vehicle was deliberate. Interval funds are simpler to stand up than ETFs, Staudt explained, but they lack the global accessibility of exchange-traded funds. Structurally, they resemble money-market funds: investors buy shares directly from the fund and redeem them during a set window rather than trading on a secondary market. Tokenization could widen that access.

ARK does not intend to stop at one fund. "This is our first step. So I don't see this as the end of the road," Staudt said. "The goal is certainly to tokenize many" of ARK's funds.

The timing reflects conditions that have improved for digital-asset infrastructure, according to Staudt: clearer rules, better digital wallets, and service providers that are more prepared to support on-chain funds.

Securitize's role deepens an existing relationship. The firm, which recently went public, counts ARK Invest among its shareholders, and ARK is an investor in Securitize.

ARK joins a growing roster of large financial firms experimenting with putting traditional assets on blockchains, a shift that could reshape how securities are issued, traded, and settled. The market is expanding fast. Tokenized real-world assets have surged by more than 400% from the beginning of 2025 to roughly $39 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz. That figure remains tiny next to the multi-trillion-dollar pools sitting in mutual funds and ETFs.

Backers of the technology argue blockchain rails could cut costs, speed up settlement, enable fractional trading, and push markets toward 24/7 access. Skeptics have not held back. The International Monetary Fund warned in an April report that tokenization could intensify financial crises.

Staudt acknowledged the concern directly. "There are risks. I want to make that very clear," he said. But he also argued that innovation "that opens up financial services to more people has been criticized by those who have an entrenched interest in keeping things the way they are."

On the current modest size of tokenized markets, Staudt pointed to a limited set of products, the friction of moving cash off legacy platforms, and the market's infancy. He also noted that nearly all leading ETF providers are now working on tokenization in some form.

If ARK executes as planned, a mainstream 2022-vintage interval fund will live on blockchain rails and be accessible on Ethereum. For everyday investors, the promised benefits — quicker settlement, potentially lower costs, and easier fractional access — could open new ways to own slices of funds that do not trade like ETFs today. Staudt's stated ambition to tokenize many more ARK funds suggests ARKVX is a test case for a much broader on-chain rollout.