Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest To Beat BlackRock, Fidelity In SEC Tokenized Fund Race

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest is becoming the clear frontrunner in the effort to launch the first tokenized investment funds in the U.S., according to reports. The update suggests that ARK Invest could outpace other competitors such as BlackRock and Fidelity if the Securities and Exchange Commission rolls out an innovation exemption that is linked to transfer agents.

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Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Reportedly Emerges As Front-Runner

In his X post, The Rollup podcast host Andy C revealed that he has received new information from his sources indicating that ARK Invest is making the first move towards tokenized funds.

He wrote, “Things are moving quickly right now and we’re rather confident in hearing that Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest is going to be one of the first asset managers to go live with tokenized securities via a transfer agent as part of the SEC innovation exemption.”

The rollout is poised to start with Cathie Wood-backed ARK funds and then move on to more funds, he added. According to his post, “Fidelity, WisdomTree, and several others are likely as well.”

The upgrade is on top of his previous report which named ARK Invest, BlackRock and Fidelity as the companies expected to be more close to the SEC’s approval process. At the time, he said these firms could tokenize the funds and let investors buy and sell the fund itself, as well as trade the underlying assets, onchain.

UPDATE: Things are moving quickly right now and we’re rather confident in hearing that Cathie Wood’s ARKInvest is going to be one of the first asset managers to go live with tokenized securities via a transfer agent as part of the SEC innovation exemption.

Starting with ARK… https://t.co/zVUzATPJPJ

— Andy (@andyyy) September 8, 2026

He also reported the latest information was more solid than previous market rumors. The industry was now waiting to see if SEC Chief Paul Atkins would approve such a framework, Andy C added.

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SEC Proposal Puts Transfer Agents At Center of Tokenization

The reports around Cathie Wood-led ARK came out shortly after an SEC proposed rule change for transfer agents that was the largest since the early 1980s. Recordkeeping and tokenized securities are touched upon numerous times in the 421-page SEC proposal.

Transfer agents keep secured shareholder records and conduct security transfers. The SEC stated that “market participants are creating ‘blockchain-native’ transfer agents to oversee tokenized funds, distributed ledger records and smart contract-driven operations.

The proposal includes providing transfer agents with data for the number of securities that they will have on distributed ledgers as master shareholders. They would also distinguish between issuer-sponsored and third-party-sponsored tokenized securities in their regulatory filings.

The SEC is also asking for comments on whether there should be a direct shareholder blockchain record keeping system. It is considering ways to potentially correlate wallet addresses and connect them to verified investors, while also keeping ownership records up-to-date following on-chain transfers.

For further context, this proposal had been under development for over a decade, and was an invitation to comment on the implications for tokenization, Commissioner Hester Peirce said. The last review of transfer agent rules by the SEC was in the form of a concept release in 2015.

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