ARK Venture Adds an Exit Door. Will Anyone Be on the Other Side?

For an investment as low as $500, ARK Venture ARKVX has sold everyday investors access to SpaceX SPCX before it went public, along with OpenAI and Anthropic. As with most interval funds investing in private companies, cashing in your stake isn’t quick or easy. ARK Venture buys back shares four times a year, and it typically offers to take just 5% of them each time.

On Sept. 21, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission gave ARK Invest permission to add two share classes to the fund: one listed on a stock exchange, and one “tokenized,” with ownership recorded on a blockchain and tradable on regulated electronic venues. Three days later, ARK and digital-securities issuance platform Securitize launched the tokenized version on the ethereum blockchain. That opens the possibility that interval-fund shareholders could sell to another investor rather than wait for the fund to buy them out.

A Second Way Out

A tokenized share is an ordinary fund share whose ownership is recorded on a blockchain, a shared digital ledger that logs every transfer. Its holder has a claim on the same portfolio as every other shareholder. Anyone can view the ledger, but only vetted investors can hold the shares. They sit in digital wallets, which are software accounts secured by private keys that let owners hold and move blockchain assets. Per the SEC, each wallet must pass anti-money-laundering, know-your-customer, and sanctions screening before it can receive shares. Any trading would take place on alternative trading systems, which are electronic venues run by SEC-registered broker/dealers, on other regulated quotation venues, or through transfers between approved wallets.

The legal permission is further along than the plumbing. At launch, ARK said investors would buy through Securitize much as they would through a brokerage, with the same liquidity terms as the existing classes. Shares aren’t yet listed on an exchange. For now, shareholders who want out still depend on the fund’s quarterly repurchases.

Why ARK Wants It

ARK’s most concrete motive is reach, because many brokerages can’t easily offer interval funds. Investors buy shares directly from the fund and sell them back during repurchase windows, and brokerages must process those orders through the National Securities Clearing Corporation. ARK told the SEC that many platforms, especially financial technology apps, aren’t equipped to do that. Tokenized shares get around the problem. Broker/dealers or the fund’s transfer agent can sell them directly, with ownership recorded on the blockchain. Tom Staudt, ARK’s president, also told Bloomberg that interval funds lack the global reach of exchange-traded funds.

Broader distribution means a larger potential fee-generating asset base. The firm is also thinking beyond ARK Venture. Staudt said the goal is “certainly to tokenize many” of the firm’s funds.

ARK also has a thesis to prove. Blockchain is one of the five innovation platforms that anchor the firm’s research, and firm founder Cathie Wood said on social media that tokenizing the fund “puts our conviction in the evolution, if not revolution, of capital markets into practice.” Staudt called tokenization an “inevitable outcome” that every asset manager needs a plan for. ARK has put money behind that view with its October 2025 investment in Securitize.

The Price of Leaving Early

Few shareholders are heading for the exits right now. Only one of the past six quarterly repurchases, in September 2024, reached the 5% cap. The two most recent took back about 1.5% of shares. The cap bites when many investors want out at once, and because repurchases are allocated across the whole fund, tokenized holders would compete for the same 5% as everyone else.

The new classes add a different option: sell anytime to a willing buyer, at whatever that buyer will pay. Such trades can happen above or below net asset value. Discounts look more likely than premiums. The fund keeps selling new shares at NAV, which leaves buyers little reason to pay more, while a seller who needs cash tomorrow may accept less.

Timing adds a wrinkle. ARK publishes NAV once each business day, and most of the portfolio is valued privately. A token could reprice on a Saturday after big news about a private holding, in which case a discount may anticipate Monday’s NAV.

Picture two shareholders with identical stakes on the same Friday. One owns a traditional share, asks the fund to buy it back in the next quarterly repurchase, and receives NAV weeks later. The other owns a token and could sell it that weekend to whoever will buy. They own the same fund, but the second investor ends up with less, accepting whatever discount the buyer demanded.

Swaps between share classes could keep the token’s price from climbing above NAV, but they do nothing to prop it up when it falls below. Holders of the existing classes would be able to swap into the listed or tokenized shares. If tokens traded above NAV, a holder could swap and sell at the higher price, and that added supply would push the price back down. The swap runs only one way, though: Traditional shares can become tokens, but tokens can’t become traditional shares. A buyer who picks up a token at a discount has just one route to NAV, which is the next quarterly repurchase. That offer takes only 5% of shares, and if too many holders ask to sell, each gets only part of the request filled. With a monthslong wait and no guarantee of a full payout, discounts can last. ARK has yet to detail how the swaps would work.

Same Fund Underneath

Tokenized or not, ARK Venture remains pricey. The fund charges a 2.75% management fee, and its existing classes carry net expense ratios of 2.90% to 3.60%. The SEC lets the tokenized share class carry its own costs, including tokenization-agent fees and the ethereum transaction charges known as gas. Securitize’s offering page lists a 2% transaction fee to buy ARK Venture.

ARK Venture also remains among the riskiest funds out there. Around three-fourths of the portfolio’s assets were in privately held assets, priced by ARK using models and inputs such as recent funding rounds instead of market quotes.

Here the new classes could do some good. A traded price would give outsiders a running check on ARK’s private-company marks, and a persistent discount would be hard to ignore.

What Investors Should Do

Long-term holders who plan to use the quarterly repurchases gain little right away. The new exit matters most in a downturn, which is also when selling to another investor could mean accepting a steep discount.

Staudt called the launch a first step. Until a trading venue opens, the most reliable way out of ARK Venture remains the one investors have always had: the quarterly repurchase.