Cathie Wood's ARK teams with Securitize to tokenize venture fund with OpenAI, Anthropic stakes
The ARK Venture Fund is bringing exposure to sought-after private tech companies onchain through Securitize, first on Ethereum then potentially expanding to other chains.
Cathie Wood's ARK Invest is putting its venture fund on blockchain rails, bringing a portfolio that includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks onto blockchain rails.
The ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) will issue tokenized interests using infrastructure from Securitize (SECZ), with the tokenization firm handling onchain issuance and the investor experience.
“Making the ARK Venture Fund available onchain is a natural extension of our mission to democratize access to technologically enabled disruptive innovation,” Wood, ARK's founder, CEO and chief investment officer, said in a statement.
The sector also got a regulatory boost last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a five-year “innovation exemption” allowing certain tokenized U.S. stocks to trade on specially designed onchain venues. The framework gives financial firms another pathway to experiment with blockchain-based securities as regulators seek to bring more of the market onchain.