Unlock Pre-IPO Gold: How to Invest in SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic in One Strategic Move

Breaking the VC Barrier—Retail Investors Finally Get a Seat at the Table

The Triple-Threat Portfolio

Forget begging for allocation crumbs from Sand Hill Road elites. New investment vehicles now bundle pre-IPO shares from Musk's SpaceX, Altman's OpenAI, and Dario Amodei's Anthropic into single-access products. These aren't your grandfather's index funds—they're speculative rockets wrapped in regulatory packaging.

How It Works—Cutting Out the Middleman

Special-purpose funds acquire secondary shares through private networks, then offer fractional exposure to accredited investors. No seven-figure minimums. No warm introductions. Just pure, unadulterated FOMO in a neatly structured wrapper—because nothing says 'democratization' like paying 2% management fees for assets that might not IPO for half a decade.

The Fine Print Gambit

Liquidity? Locked. Valuations? Opaque. Regulatory scrutiny? Intensifying. But when has that ever stopped a good story from separating optimistic capital from rational caution?

Place Your Bets—The House Always Wins

Wall Street’s latest alchemy: turning illiquid promise into tradable hype. Because if you’re not early, you’re late—and if you’re wrong, well, at least the fund managers still get their cut.

Image source: Getty Images.

Invest through Public, SoFi, or Titan investing apps

Public,, and Titan are the only places you can buy Ark Venture without an advisor, so you'll need to download one of these apps first, if you haven't already.

From there, it's as easy as opening an investment account and plugging at least $500 into the fund. Why $500? It's the minimum amount you need to purchase shares.

Voila! You're a proud owner of three of the top 10 biggest private and hottest companies on the market.

Company

Previous Valuation Estimate

Current Valuation Estimate

Data source: Crunchbase, Anthropic.

As of this writing, 12% of the Ark Venture Fund is SpaceX, the company that pioneered reusable rockets. The case for SpaceX: It has launched over 8,000 Starlink satellites into space that connect you to the internet for a monthly subscription.

The medium-term total addressable market for satellite connectivity is $100 billion, according to Ark. Starlink's 2024 revenue is estimated at $8.4 billion, up from $4.2 billion in 2023. The company's internet service is growing fast, with room to run.

The magic of Ark Venture is it gives you a little bit of everything that could shape the future. And an annualized 18.51% growth is nothing to sneeze at.

But there are big caveats.

It's a venture-interval fund, riskier than your typical ETF basket

This isn't your typical ETF. It's a venture-interval fund, which means it's got special restrictions and costs you don't see in the public market. It's less liquid, fees are high, and it includes private companies that aren't upheld to the same regulatory standards as public companies.

Liquidity is low. You can only sell your investments once per quarter, at specific dates. Furthermore, the fund limits total withdrawals to 5% of the fund. So, if the fund tanks and everyone tries to sell, your sale might not go through.

Fees are much higher than your typical basket of public stocks. An actively managed fund, Ark Venture charges a 2.9% fee, whereas the average fee of actively traded ETFs lands around 0.51%. That's a hefty haircut.

Say you invest $10,000 into two funds with average returns of 18%. With an annual fee of 0.51%, your investment WOULD grow to $50,120 in 10 years. Fees of 2.9% would only leave you with $40,809. That's almost $10,000 lost to fees! Over long periods, every percentage point matters.

The fund's high fees may seem partly justified by its growth, as its holdings have returned 79% in shareholder value since March 2023. But over the same period, the market has returned 89%.

Like most Ark funds, this one seems to be underperforming the broader market. It remains to be seen whether the it can continue to return high multiples during a bear market.

A couple of perks set the fund apart. First, it's public-private, giving individual investors a unique opportunity to invest in private funds -- and hold them when they go public. Another perk is access. Ark Venture holds a staggering amount of high-profile companies. You get toeholds in many coveted companies, before they become available to everyone else.

Note, private companies are tough-to-access for a reason. These aren't as regulated as public companies, they don't need to report company metrics, and they aren't held to the same standards as companies likeand. If anything goes wrong, it might be individual investors who shoulder the burden.

It's a growth play and a hedge against FOMO -- fear of missing out on stocks like OpenAI

Despite the risks, Ark Venture is a unique investment opportunity, and I think it's worth a small piece of your portfolio.

The promise is growth. Companies in the fund continue to grow at a blistering pace, driven by massive demand in sectors like space and artificial intelligence (AI). If Ark analyst forecasts are correct, then the fund's fees are probably justified.

But the real benefit of owning Ark Venture Fund might not be growth, but mindset. Why I own shares: An investment in the fund is a hedge against FOMO -- "fear of missing out" on profits made by fast-growing, next-generation companies. Taking a small stake gives me the peace of mind I need to focus on other, less speculative bets.