Tokenization has made it remarkably easy to put money into private funds. Getting it back out is another matter entirely.
Fission, a New York-based startup, has raised a $10 million Series A to close that gap. Pantera Capital led the round, which closed in September and was announced on Thursday.
Circle Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Ari Rubenstein also joined. Fission declined to share its valuation.
Selling in seconds, not seasons
Fission is tackling a quirk in the tokenized fund market. Asset managers have been turning fund shares into digital tokens on blockchains. That makes the shares easier to issue, track, and hold.
What it hasn’t done is make them easier to sell. Without a ready buyer, investors can wait months to cash out. Traditional redemption processes for these funds can stretch past 200 days.
Fission’s pitch is to shrink that window to roughly 90 seconds. Qualified investors can sell their positions through digital wallets. Settlement happens in stablecoins, and the platform runs 24/7.
The company describes its settlement as atomic. Both the fund shares and the payment change hands in a single transaction, with no partial completion. If either side of the trade fails, nothing moves.
Fission’s co-founders are CEO Jonathan Shaffer, CRO Steve Bendit, and CTO Chris Humphrey. The trio started the company in 2024.
Shaffer has pointed to the disconnect between tokenization and real liquidity as a core source of friction in the market.
Who Fission is building for
The target customers are institutions that already hold assets on-chain. That includes hedge funds with tokenized private credit or private equity positions.
It also includes crypto institutions managing their treasuries. Those firms often want yield without locking up cash for half a year.
Stablecoin issuers are a third audience. Issuers looking to put reserves into yield-bearing tokenized products need confidence they can pull that money back quickly.
Fission says its platform plugs into existing tokenized fund ecosystems, including Centrifuge. That integration widens liquidity options for funds from Apollo, Janus Henderson, and New York Life Investments.
From venture tokens to a broader liquidity play
The Series A builds on a $1.6 million pre-seed round Fission raised in October 2024. SALT Fund and Kraynos Capital participated in that earlier raise.
At the time, the company’s focus was narrower. It aimed to bring venture capital products on-chain, using tokenization and liquidity tools built on Ethereum.
The new round reflects a shift in scope. Rather than concentrating on venture products, Fission now wants to serve as a liquidity layer for a wider range of tokenized private funds.
What this means for tokenized funds
Circle Ventures’ participation signals interest from the stablecoin side of the industry, where settlement rails and yield-bearing reserve options are live concerns. Fission settles trades in stablecoins, so the overlap is hard to miss.
Integrations with Centrifuge and access to funds from Apollo, Janus Henderson, and New York Life Investments provide a foothold for institutional adoption.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.