ARK Venture Fund

About The Fund

ARK Investment Management LLC registered the ARK Venture Fund (the "Fund") on 2/3/2022.

The Fund seeks to drive long-term capital growth for investors, by primarily investing in equity securities of private companies offering tech-enabled products or services that ARK believes could potentially "change the way the world works." In practice, that means investing in private firms trying to innovate in fields like genomics, automation, transportation and energy, artificial intelligence, next-gen internet, and FinTech.

Thus, for a $1000 minimum initial investment, ARK seeks to offer retail investors what used to be the exclusive realm of private equity and venture capital firms – exposure to companies before they go public.

The Fund shares some thematic overlap with the ARK Innovation ETF ($ARKK), and both are registered under the '40 Act, but the similarities stop there.

Most of ARK's ETFs famously had an abysmal 2021 as investors dumped the ETFs' underlying growth tech stocks amid inflation reports, and finally began dumping the ETFs themselves. By contrast, this Fund offers two stopgap measures against sell-offs – the Fund primarily invests in companies that aren't traded on exchanges, so its underlying holdings are less immediately vulnerable to rapidly-shifting investor sentiments. And of course, because the Fund is an interval fund, it intends to offer to repurchase no more than 5% of outstanding shares on a quarterly basis.

If the Fund is approved by the SEC, we'll be watching to see if investors view it as a lower-volatility alternative to ETFs like $ARKK, or if the prospect of limited liquidity in an ARK product after 2021 sends their dollars elsewhere.

ARK Investment Management, LLC, now based in St. Petersburg, Florida, offers 9 ETFs available in the U.S. representing – at least, as of 2/4/2022 – more than $30.6 billion in combined net assets.

From the Fund's prospectus:

The Fund: The Fund is a Delaware statutory trust that is registered under the 1940 Act as a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company. The Fund is operated as an “interval fund."

Investment Objective: The Fund's investment objective is to seek long-term growth of capital.

Investment Strategies: The fund will invest, under normal circumstances, primarily in domestic and foreign equity securities of companies that are relevant to the Fund's investment theme of disruptive innovation. The Adviser defines "disruptive innovation" as the introduction of a technologically enabled new product or service that potentially changes the way the world works. The Adviser believes that companies relevant to this theme are those that rely on or benefit from the development of new products or services, technological improvements and advancements in scientific research relating to the areas of genomics ("Genomic Revolution Companies"); innovation in automation and manufacturing ("Automation Transformation Companies"), transportation [and] energy ("Energy Transformation Companies"); artificial intelligence ("Artificial Intelligence Companies") and materials; the increased use of shared technology, infrastructure and services ("Next Generation Internet Companies"); and technologies that make financial services more efficient ("FinTech Innovation Companies").

In seeking to achieve its investment objective, the Fund may invest, without limit, in privately placed or restricted securities (including in Rule 144A securities, which are privately placed securities purchased by qualified institutional buyers), illiquid securities and securities in which no secondary market is readily available, including those of private companies.

The Adviser will select investments for the Fund that represent its highest-conviction investment ideas within the theme of disruptive innovation, as described above, in constructing the Fund's portfolio. The Adviser's process...uses both "top down" (thematic research sizing the potential total available market, and surfacing the prime beneficiaries) and "bottom up" (valuation, fundamental and quantitative measures) approaches. In both the Adviser's "top down" and "bottom up" approaches, the Adviser evaluates environmental, social and governance ("ESG") considerations. In its "top down" approach, the Adviser uses the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to integrate ESG considerations into its research and investment process. The Adviser, however, does not use ESG considerations to limit, restrict or otherwise exclude companies or sectors from the Fund's investment universe. In its "bottom up" approach, the Adviser makes its investment decisions primarily based on its analysis of the potential of individual companies, while integrating ESG considerations into that process.

Adviser: ARK Investment Management LLC

Legal Counsel: Dechert LLP

Partners: Allison M. Fumai and William J. Bielefeld

Percentage and dollar changes represent the increase or decrease in the NAV from the preceding trading day.