Fission raises $10M to fix the exit problem in tokenized funds
What's the deal? FissionDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a New York-based startup, has raised a $10 million Series A to let investors sell tokenized fund shares in seconds rather than wait months for a buyer. Pantera Capital led the round, which closed in September, with participation from Circle VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Borderless CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Ari Rubenstein. The company declined to disclose its valuation.
What's the endgame? Tokenization lets investors skip paperwork to buy into funds from managers such as BlackRock, Apollo, and Janus HendersonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — but finding a buyer to sell to is another matter. Fission's fix is to act as the buyer itself, processing a sale through its platform instead of waiting on the fund.
Investors connect their digital wallets and submit a sale; Fission handles the legal and trading mechanics behind the scenes.
Why now? Tokenization is gaining traction on Wall Street. BlackRock added two tokenized money market products in August, while JPMorganDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s asset management arm launched its second tokenized money market fund for US investors in May.
Federated HermesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → announced a partnership with PrometheumDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → this month to distribute tokenized funds through brokerages, with the first product expected in early 2027.
The missing exit: Liquidity remains the gap. In June, digital investment platform InvestaXDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → said investors in tokenized private-credit products mostly moved money through the funds rather than selling to other buyers. An earlier report by the International Organization of Securities Commissions found firms had made more progress creating tokens than building markets to trade them.
"It would take you normally about 200 days to sell [a] product. For a fee, you can sell it right now and get your money back, and this will settle… in 90 seconds or less," chief executive officer Jonathan Shaffer told Fortune .
What could go wrong? Acting as the buyer puts Fission on the hook for holdings that may be hard to resell, concentrating risk on its own balance sheet. The model's viability depends on a secondary market that regulators and platforms say barely exists yet.
The signal: The $10 million round sits in the top quartile of its peer group — a sign investors see value in the plumbing rather than the issuance. "Where tokenization is today has really been focused around the bridging layer and the issuance layer… but what Fission is focused on — the post-tokenization problem — almost nobody is focused on," said Franklin Bi, general partner at Pantera Capital.
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Image credit: ehnmark
