How To Invest In Architect

By Lorenzo Valente

Director of Digital Assets

Lorenzo joined ARK in March 2024. As the Director of Digital Assets, he focuses on the long tail of crypto assets including research in Layer ones and other DeFi tokens.

Self-Directed Investors historically have had limited access to private companies like Architect before they go public. All US investors can download the SoFi or Titan app and, with as little as $500, invest in a portfolio of private and public companies through the ARK Venture Fund.

Architect is an institutional financial-technology company building next-generation infrastructure for global capital markets. Architect combines deep derivatives expertise with modern software engineering to deliver a vertically integrated stack across brokerage, execution, and exchange matching.

It operates as a derivatives exchange group and electronic brokerage, built for two markets that did not exist in regulated form three years ago: perpetual futures on traditional assets and listed derivatives on AI compute. Founded in January 2023 by Brett Harrison, an alumnus of Jane Street and Citadel Securities who later served as president of FTX US,¹ the company owns its matching engine, clearing, margin and Application Programming Interface (API) stack and runs it across four regulated entities in the United States and Bermuda. ARK invested in the $35 million Series A in December 2025, anchored by Miami International Holdings (MIAX) and Tioga Capital, with Galaxy Ventures, VanEck, and Coinbase Ventures participating, at a reported $187 million post-money valuation. We disclosed the position in the ARK Venture Fund 4th Quarter 2025 Update. 

The thesis begins with perpetual futures. A perpetual future is a futures contract with no expiry date: instead of rolling each quarter and paying the spread and fees each roll incurs, a trader holds one position indefinitely and pays or receives a funding rate that keeps the contract anchored to spot. The instrument was invented in crypto and scaled there first. According to BlackRock iShares, centralized crypto exchanges handled roughly $86 trillion in perpetual futures volume in 2025, and Crypto.com Research reported $31.0 billion in on-chain real-world asset (RWA) perpetual volume in January 2026, up 162% from December. US regulation is now following the product. In May 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) set out a case-by-case review path for perpetual contracts through designated contract markets (DCMs), the federally licensed US futures exchanges. On September 10, 2026, Kalshi launched gold and silver perpetuals, the first non-crypto perpetuals approved on a US DCM, and CME Group is contesting the CFTC’s approvals in court, which in our view shows how directly the product threatens the roll-based fee model of incumbent exchanges. An instrument refined in crypto is extending into the asset classes macro investors already trade, and Architect has both the technology and the licenses to carry it there. 

AX is where that thesis is live today. Operated by Architect Bermuda Ltd under the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), AX launched in November 2025 as the first centralized exchange for perpetual futures on traditional assets: currencies, interest rates, single stocks, stock indexes, ETFs, metals, energy and, since July 2026, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) compute. According to the company, AX pairs the perpetual design with central clearing, anonymous central limit order books, instant settlement, and collateral in fiat or stablecoins. The company reports nearly $3 billion in notional volume by July 2026, when the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA)² approved access for eligible individual investors and omnibus brokerage accounts; US persons remain excluded. Distribution is being built around the venue: MarketVector partnered on interest-rate perpetuals, Deltix integrated its trading platform, and in September 2026 Apex Fintech Solutions signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to bring Architect’s US perpetuals and options to its network of more than 200 brokerage firms. As ARK argued in our Kalshi thesis, broker distribution deepens liquidity and strengthens network effects. We believe AX is also the proving ground where Architect’s stack runs at scale before the same technology lists products onshore. 

The American Innovation Exchange, or AI Exchange, is the onshore venue and the center of our thesis. In May 2026 Architect acquired IMX Health LLC, a CFTC-registered DCM, and announced the first US futures exchange purpose-built for the AI economy. The planned product set is cash-settled futures and options on GPU rental prices across Nvidia’s H100, H200, B200 and B300, listed on a curve from one month to two years, alongside futures on the metals, energy, and power that datacenters consume, all cross-marginable in one account. Settlement references Compute Desk’s IOSCO-compliant GPU rental indexes, built from live transaction data and published on Bloomberg. Contracts are subject to CFTC review, and the regulator opened a public consultation on compute derivatives in August 2026. The exchange serves the four groups that carry compute price risk: buyers such as frontier labs and hyperscalers³ locking in training and inference costs; sellers such as neoclouds and colocation operators forward-selling capacity before it is built; lenders that need a liquid hedge to mark GPU collateral; and market makers and macro funds seeking exposure to a new commodity. 

ComputeConnect closes the gap between the futures and the hardware. The standard objection to compute derivatives is that an unused GPU-hour cannot be stored, so a cash-settled contract leaves a hedger with basis risk against the capacity they actually buy or sell. ComputeConnect, built with Compute Desk on its Compute Clear settlement layer, is an exchange-for-physical (EFP) network that lets an AI Exchange customer convert a futures position into provisioned GPU capacity, and lets a neocloud deliver capacity against a short position. It is the physical delivery mechanism that made oil and metals futures usable by producers rather than only by speculators, and no competing venue has announced an equivalent. In our view this is what turns compute into a bankable, financeable asset. 

Liquid Inference, launched on October 7, 2026, applies the same market structure to the output of the compute the exchange hedges. It is a live auction for large language model inference: providers post competing offers to serve a model, and each request goes to the lowest-priced offer that meets the buyer’s rules for cost, latency, region, and data handling. Buyers connect through any OpenAI or Anthropic compatible client, lock a maximum price before the first token, and pay only on metered usage. Inference is becoming one of the largest line items in technology budgets yet still trades at list prices and bilateral contracts, and Liquid Inference gives Architect a spot market, a data set, and a customer relationship where compute is consumed. Architect’s National Futures Association (NFA)-registered subsidiary also brokers block trades in compute capacity and structures over-the-counter (OTC) swaps on compute and memory, serving large hedgers before listed liquidity exists and migrating that flow onto the exchange as it builds. Underneath sits the US brokerage: Architect Securities, a FINRA broker-dealer for equities, ETFs and options, and Architect Financial Derivatives, a National Futures Association introducing broker for futures. Both are API-first and give Architect onshore customers, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and CFTC standing, and a direct onboarding path into the AI Exchange. 

Compute is why we hold the position with conviction. AI infrastructure capital expenditure (capex) is converging on hundreds of billions of dollars a year by 2030, GPU rental is already a multi-billion-dollar spot market, and essentially none of that exposure is hedged. The last comparable moments were the creation of crude oil futures, electricity futures, and bitcoin futures, and in each case the venue that established the reference contract kept it. Compute behaves like power rather than oil, since it cannot be stored and its forward curve reflects scarcity, which favors a venue with a full curve, options, and physical settlement over a single dated contract. Architect is the only pure-play: CME Group with Silicon Data targeted two monthly futures on New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) for October 5, 2026, and Intercontinental Exchange and Nodal Exchange have announced contracts, all pending review; but compute is one product line among thousands for them and the entire company for Architect. Its businesses also reinforce one another: the OTC desk originates hedges, the AI Exchange clears them, ComputeConnect settles them in hardware, Liquid Inference prices the output, and the brokerage and Apex network bring order flow. Finally, compute derivatives are the hedging layer beneath the datacenter financing stack ARK already covers, from neocloud equity to GPU-backed credit, and Architect gives the Venture Fund direct exposure to that layer at a fintech-startup valuation. 

We believe the upside in Architect’s business model is asymmetric. Mature exchange operators earn operating margins above 60% because liquidity is self-reinforcing: each new market maker, broker, and contract makes the venue more useful to the next participant. Index partnerships create listable underliers that incumbents lack, and every new product launches on infrastructure Architect already owns. ARK also views a regulatory license as difficult to obtain and a strong moat; Architect holds a US DCM, a BMA-licensed exchange, a FINRA broker-dealer, and an NFA introducing and swaps broker, a footprint assembled in three years that a new entrant would likely struggle to replicate. We hold these views probabilistically, because Architect is early and much of its traction rests on company-reported figures. 

We believe the key risks are specific. CFTC approval of the AI Exchange contracts is pending and a long rulemaking hurts a Series A company more than Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Cash-settled compute contracts are only as good as their index, and Compute Desk is unproven and also partnered with Nodal. Liquidity may form first on CME because Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) and market makers are already connected there. Coinbase, Kalshi, and Hyperliquid compete for perpetuals flow, and AX liquidity has not been confirmed by independent data. Five product lines on $52 million of cumulative funding imply a further raise before the exchange reaches scale. Harrison’s prior leadership of FTX US invites reputational scrutiny, although he stepped down in September 2022, before the group collapsed that November, and the matter has not blocked any license. 

Architect aligns with ARK’s focus on disruptive innovation in financial services. ARK believes blockchain-native market structure, including perpetual futures, instant clearing, and programmable collateral, is likely to disrupt traditional financial business models. Architect carries that structure into regulated markets and into AI compute, the commodity we expect to define this decade’s capital cycle. Over a multiyear horizon, we believe venues that combine regulatory licenses, broker distribution, and new underliers could reshape how investors access macro exposure and how the AI industry prices, hedges, and finances its largest input cost.

Important Information

We offer our view of Architect because it is part of the total ARK Venture Fund portfolio. To see the most updated portfolio, please visit here. Holdings subject to change. Not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any specific security.

BEFORE INVESTING YOU SHOULD CAREFULLY CONSIDER THE FUND'S INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES, RISKS, CHARGES AND EXPENSES. THIS AND OTHER INFORMATION IS IN THE PROSPECTUS, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED HERE. PLEASE READ THE PROSPECTUS CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU INVEST.

There is no assurance that the Fund will meet its investment objective. The value of your investment in the Fund, as well as the amount of return you receive on your investment in the Fund, may fluctuate significantly. You may lose part or all of your investment in the Fund or your investment may not perform as well as other similar investments. Therefore, you should consider carefully the risks at the bottom of this page before investing in the Fund.

ARK Investment Management LLC is the investment adviser to the ARK Venture Fund.

Foreside Fund Services, LLC, distributor