SEC approves ARK Venture Fund to offer blockchain-based share class

The Securities and Exchange Commission has cleared ARK Venture Fund to create two new share classes, one built for listing on a national exchange and one designed to record ownership using blockchain technology. The order gives Cathie Wood’s fund a regulatory pathway for tokenized shares inside a registered investment company, though no launch date has been set and no shares are trading yet.

• The SEC issued Release No. IC-36333, granting ARK Venture Fund and ARK Investment Management amended exemptive relief.
• The order creates an Exchange Class for national exchange listing and a Tokenized Class using distributed-ledger ownership records.
• ARK has not announced a live trading date or confirmed the Tokenized Class is operating on any alternative trading system.

• IC-36333 SEC release number granting ARK’s amended exemptive relief
• 2 new share classes cleared under one single order
• 0 confirmed launch dates disclosed for the tokenized shares

The order gives ARK Venture Fund room to run two distribution rails for the same underlying portfolio rather than launching a new product. One class targets conventional exchange listing; the other lets ownership records live on a blockchain rather than a traditional transfer agent’s ledger.

That distinction matters because it moves tokenization out of the marketing layer and into fund structure itself. As newsbtc.com reported, the SEC order addresses the legal architecture a registered fund needs to maintain a tokenized class alongside its conventional interests, not just the technology layer sitting on top of it.

SEC Order Splits ARK Venture Fund Into Two Share Classes

Release No. IC-36333 amends ARK Venture Fund’s existing exemptive relief under the Investment Company Act to permit an Exchange Class and a Tokenized Class within the same fund structure. The Exchange Class is built for listing on a national securities exchange, putting it on the same footing as conventional exchange-traded products.

The Tokenized Class goes further. Its ownership records can be maintained using distributed-ledger technology, with trading potentially routed through alternative trading systems rather than a standard exchange.

For institutional investors, the order signals that the SEC is willing to let blockchain-based ownership records sit inside the same transfer, custody and investor-protection framework that already governs registered funds. That is a narrower but more durable form of approval than the private-market tokenization pilots that have proliferated over the past two years.

Order Grants Structure, Not A Trading Debut

Nothing in the order confirms the Tokenized Class is live on an ATS today. ARK has not set a commercial launch date in the material tied to this filing, making this a regulatory infrastructure story rather than a product debut.

That gap between permission and product is the detail institutional allocators should track most closely. A fund can hold an exemptive order for months before any share actually changes hands under the new structure.

The approval nonetheless fits a broader pattern of tokenized products migrating from bespoke arrangements toward frameworks built inside existing securities law.

Congress Still Has To Settle Market Structure Rules

ARK’s order arrives while lawmakers continue debating the broader legal framework digital-asset products will eventually operate under.

That leaves a split track: fund-level exemptive relief advancing at the SEC while comprehensive digital-asset market structure legislation stalls in Congress. ARK now has to decide when, or whether, to activate the Tokenized Class it has been cleared to build.

The CCS read. We see this as a template test more than a product launch. If ARK’s Tokenized Class goes live on an ATS without friction, other registered fund sponsors gain a precedent for wrapping blockchain settlement inside existing ’40 Act structures rather than building offshore or private-market workarounds.

The open question is timing: ARK has cleared the regulatory hurdle but has not said when, or if, the Tokenized Class will begin recording live trades on an alternative trading system.