By Paul R. La Monica

SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other ginormous unicorns are likely to go public later this year. But investors who are hungry to get exposure to these and other privately held start-ups don't have to necessarily wait for their initial public offerings.

Cathie Wood's Ark Venture Fund, for example, has a big investment in SpaceX as well as Elon Musk's x.AI and Neuralink. It also owns stakes in OpenAI, robotics company Figure AI, drone delivery firm Zipline International, and Fortnite maker Epic Games.

Ark Venture has posted a more than 55% return in NAV, or net asset value during the past year. (NAV is the difference between its assets and liabilities, such as fees, divided by its total outstanding shares.) But as Bespoke Investment Research pointed out in a report Friday, the fund doesn't trade like a normal exchange-traded fund, mutual fund, or even a closed-end fund. Ark Venture is a so-called interval fund that isn't necessarily easy for investors to get money out of.

"The fund has a unique structure that may be unfamiliar to many investors. Instead of trading on an exchange like a traditional closed-end fund, inflows can be purchased at NAV (for as little as $500). Exit liquidity is more limited: each quarter, the fund will buy back up to 5% of outstanding shares at NAV," Bespoke noted.

In other words, investors only have the chance to sell back shares to the fund on a quarterly basis. It's not like buying or selling a stock or an ETF.

"The fund also carries a 2.9% fee," Bespoke added. "While that's not particularly high given the illiquidity of the privately held companies in the underlying portfolio, it's important to understand that investments may be locked up for a very long time."

Bespoke pointed out in its report that "this all sounds like a fantastic opportunity: get access to illiquid but rapidly appreciating companies at reasonable fees."

Ark didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bespoke pointed to recent history as a reason for treading carefully. Investors plowed into the fund during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, and "strong returns and flows fed on each other...but then the bottom fell out."

"As flows started to reverse and markets rationalized, those spectacular numbers fell into more modest territory. Then the 2022 bear market hit," Bespoke added, noting that many investors were now stuck with "deeply underwater positions."

Of course, this isn't to say that history will repeat itself and that investors are going to get burned again. But caution is probably warranted.

There are some other ways to gain access to private companies as well, but they also aren't for the faint of heart. A closed-end fund called the Destiny Tech100 has large stakes in SpaceX and OpenAI. But as Barron's has pointed out in the past, the fund trades at a substantial premium to its net asset value, making it inherently risky and expensive. The fund has surged 13% so far this year but it has plunged nearly 40% over the past 12 months.

There's also an ETF called the ERShares Private-Public Crossover fund. As the name implies, the ETF has stakes in both unicorns (SpaceX is a top holding) as well as major public companies such as Nvidia and Meta Platforms. But this ETF has been a poor performer, falling more than 6.5% so far in 2026. It's slightly in the red over the past 12 months too.

So investors looking to buy the next hot IPO before it goes public need to be careful. They might just be better off waiting for the stocks to actually begin trading and see how they perform -- instead of taking a big leap into the unknown.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com

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January 30, 2026 14:27 ET (19:27 GMT)

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