Fission Raises $10 Million to Solve Tokenized Fund Liquidity
New York startup Fission enables near-instant exits for investors in tokenized private funds.
1Addressing Tokenization Liquidity Gaps
While asset managers like BlackRock and Apollo increasingly use blockchain to tokenize fund shares, liquidity remains a significant challenge. Investors often face months of waiting to find buyers for their digital holdings. Fission, a New York-based startup, launched to bridge this gap by providing a platform for near-instant asset liquidation.
2Series A Funding Success
Fission secured $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital, which closed in September. Additional participants included Circle Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Ari Rubenstein. This capital injection follows an earlier $1.6 million pre-seed round, demonstrating strong institutional confidence in the startup's mission to solve post-tokenization exit problems.
3Reducing Exit Wait Times
CEO Jonathan Shaffer notes that selling tokenized fund products traditionally takes approximately 200 days. Fission changes this by acting as the buyer, allowing investors to sell their holdings through the platform. The company handles all legal and trading mechanics behind the scenes, enabling transactions to settle in 90 seconds or less.
4Founding Team and Vision
The startup was founded in 2024 by CEO Jonathan Shaffer, CRO Steve Bendit, and CTO Curtis Humphrey. Shaffer previously worked at Point72, while Bendit led business development at Securitize. The founders spent two years analyzing why fund liquidity remained elusive before launching Fission to specifically address the post-tokenization market bottleneck.
5Institutional Customer Base
Fission currently employs eight people across Long Island and Los Angeles. Its primary customer base consists of institutional investors, including hedge funds holding tokenized private credit or equity. Additionally, crypto organizations managing treasuries and stablecoin issuers utilize the platform to manage reserves, alongside a growing segment of wealthy individual investors.
6Broader Market Context
Wall Street firms are aggressively expanding their digital ledger offerings. BlackRock introduced two tokenized money market products in August, and JPMorgan launched its second tokenized fund in May. Despite these advancements, regulators and industry reports indicate that firms have prioritized issuance over creating functional secondary markets for these digital assets.
7Strategic Partnership Landscape
The ecosystem is evolving with new brokerage distribution models. Federated Hermes recently announced a partnership with Prometheum to offer tokenized funds through traditional brokerages by 2027. These developments highlight the industry's shift toward digital assets, yet Fission remains focused on the critical, often overlooked challenge of enabling efficient investor exits.
8Future Market Implications
Fission's role as a liquidity provider addresses a fundamental flaw in the current tokenization trend. By transforming a 200-day process into a 90-second transaction, the company facilitates greater capital efficiency. As more institutional assets move onto blockchains, the ability to exit positions quickly will likely become a standard requirement for investors.
Original article: Fortune — Fission Raises $10 Million to Solve Tokenized Fund Liquidity