How to Invest in Future Unicorn IPOs

How to Invest in Future Unicorn IPOs

From Trillions by Bloomberg

January 29, 2026 · 50 min

About this episode

The episode discusses how ARK's Venture Fund invests in private companies and the challenges of private-market exposure.

Cathie Wood is best known for exchange-traded funds, especially her flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK). But ARK also runs a less familiar product: the ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX), an interval fund that holds stakes in private companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic—firms expected to make a splash when they go public, perhaps as soon as this year. The fund has quietly become one of the few active strategies to outperform the Nasdaq 100, yet it still manages only about $500 million in assets and comes with caveats typical of interval funds (namely illiquidity). On this episode of  Trillions , Eric Balchunas and Joel Weber speak with Wood, Brett Winton and Charles Roberts—the fund’s three portfolio managers—about how they decide which private companies to invest in, how they value assets that don’t trade publicly and whether some of these holdings could eventually find their way into ARK’s ETFs. They also discuss the structural challenges of gaining private-market exposure through ETFs and how issuers and investors are navigating those limits. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People in this episode

Hosts: Eric Balchunas, Joel Weber

Guests: Cathie Wood, Brett Winton, Charles Roberts

Topics covered

  • investing
  • unicorn IPOs
  • private companies
  • ARK funds
  • market exposure
  • valuation

Keywords

  • unicorn IPOs
  • ARK Innovation ETF
  • ARK Venture Fund
  • private companies
  • investment strategy
  • illiquidity
  • valuation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ARK Innovation ETF, ARK Venture Fund, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nasdaq 100

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