Cathie Wood’s ARK Bets on Tokenization With a Stake in BlackRock-Backed Securitize

ARK Invest, the asset management firm led by CEO Cathie Wood, is leaning into the tokenization boom by taking a stake in tokenization specialist Securitize as Wall Street races to bring assets onchain.

The ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX), ARK’s closed-end, actively managed fund that invests in public and private companies, held 3.25% of its assets in Securitize, making the firm the fund’s eighth largest position following artificial intelligence (AI) companies X.AI and Anthropic, according to the fund’s latest disclosure dated September 30.

Based on the fund’s $325.3 million in net assets under management as of September 30, Ark’s stake in Securitize should be valued at roughly $10 million, according to CoinDesk’s calculation.

ARK’s investment comes as tokenization emerges as one of the hottest trends in crypto, bringing traditional financial instruments such as bonds, funds and stocks onto blockchain rails. Global banks and asset managers are exploring tokenization to cut settlement times, broaden investor access and keep markets open around the clock.

It’s potentially a huge opportunity: the tokenized asset market has grown 112% to $33 billion year-to-date, RWA.xyz data shows, and could swell to $18.9 trillion by 2033, Ripple and BCG projected earlier this year.

Securitize, founded in 2017 and led by CEO Carlos Domingo, is one of the early pioneers of the tokenization space. It issued $4.6 billion in tokenized assets working with traditional finance giants such as BlackRock, Hamilton Lane and Apollo. It is also known as the issuer behind BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) that’s leading the tokenized U.S. Treasury sector with $2.8 billion in assets.

The firm is also active in equity tokenization, creating on-chain shares of listed wallet provider Exodus in 2022 and entering into an agreement with ether (ETH) treasury firm FG Nexus (FGNX) to introduce its common and preferred stock to the Ethereum blockchain.

Ark’s investment follows Securitize’s $47 million fundraising round last year, led by BlackRock and Hamilton Lane (HLNE), with ParaFi Capital and Tradeweb Markets (TW) also participating.