Fission, a New York startup building infrastructure to unlock instant exits from tokenized private-market investments, announced in mid-October it has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Pantera Capital. Circle Ventures, New Form Capital, gumi Cryptos Capital, Borderless Capital, and Ari Rubenstein, chief executive of trading firm GTS, joined the round. The company would not disclose its valuation but said it has now raised $11.6 million total, including a $1.6 million pre-seed completed in October 2024.
The problem Fission is tackling isn't trivial. Investors who buy stakes in tokenized funds—digital versions of traditional private credit, bond, or equity products—still face the same redemption delays as their non-blockchain counterparts. Monthly windows. Quarterly gates. Settlement periods stretching weeks or longer.
Fission positions itself as the middleman, stepping in to buy positions from investors who want out now. The company provides immediate liquidity in USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, then handles the paperwork and waits out the fund's standard settlement cycle itself.
"It would take you normally about 200 days to sell," CEO Jonathan Shaffer told Fortune in an interview published alongside the funding news. "For a fee, you can sell it right now… in 90 seconds or less."
That speed claim hinges on Fission's integrations with tokenized fund platforms like Centrifuge and Midas. Investors who meet a fund's transfer restrictions submit a sale request through their crypto wallet. Fission delivers USDC almost instantly while managing legal and trading mechanics behind the scenes. The company said it has already processed millions of dollars in such redemptions, though it declined to break out specific volumes.
A Growing Roster
Fission named four Centrifuge-based funds it already serves: NYLIM's U.S. High Yield Bond strategy, Apollo's diversified credit fund, and two Janus Henderson products—one tied to AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations, the other a short-duration Treasury fund. The Block reported in June that New York Life's tokenized high-yield bond offering featured "near-instant redemptions" powered by Fission, citing posts from both companies over the summer.
In September, the startup added instant liquidity for two Midas tokens: mWIN, managed by Wellington, and mGLOBAL, overseen by Fasanara. The Fasanara fund carries a standard T+30 settlement period on-chain but offers immediate exits through Fission's service.
According to Fortune, Fission's customer base extends beyond the fund issuers themselves. Buyers include domestic and international hedge funds holding tokenized private credit or equity stakes, crypto-native organizations managing treasury operations, stablecoin issuers parking reserves in tokenized investments, and a smaller cohort of high-net-worth individuals. The company currently employs eight people.
Shaffer came to Fission from Point72, where he worked as an investor. Chief revenue officer Steve Bendit previously ran business development at Securitize, a major tokenization platform. Curtis Humphrey serves as chief technology officer. Fortune noted that original cofounder Zachary Skolnik has left the company.
Betting on the Next Phase
New Form Capital, gumi Cryptos Capital, and Anthony Scaramucci—founder of SkyBridge Capital—participated in both Fission's pre-seed and its Series A. Pantera Capital, the lead investor in this round, published research in May arguing that liquidity and composability represent tokenization's next frontier, beyond simply issuing assets on blockchains.
That thesis aligns with a broader industry conversation about what tokenization actually delivers. In April, JPMorgan blockchain chief Oliver Harris told CoinDesk that "tokenization does not equal liquidity," pointing to the very friction Fission aims to eliminate. Data from CoinDesk Research pegged tokenized assets at $28.9 billion as of May 2026. Separate figures from The Block suggest tokenized stocks have grown substantially in recent months, though precise current totals remain in flux as the market evolves rapidly.
Fission isn't the only player chasing this opportunity. Centrifuge's third-quarter recap, published in mid-October, listed three other instant-liquidity providers: Symbiotic's Liquid Lane, RedStone Settle, and Multiliquid. Competition in the niche appears to be intensifying as more traditional financial products migrate to blockchain rails.
What Comes Next
The Series A capital will go toward expanding Fission's liquidity capacity, supporting additional tokenized funds—particularly those in private markets and semi-liquid strategies—and deepening integrations with institutional platforms, the company said.
"Putting funds on-chain is only the beginning," Shaffer said in Tuesday's announcement. Broader distribution and continuous liquidity represent the real promise of tokenization, he added.
Franklin Bi, a general partner at Pantera, framed the investment in familiar venture capital terms. Fission is "building infrastructure that will help transform tokenized funds… into fundamentally more liquid and productive assets," he said.
Whether that vision pans out depends in part on how quickly institutional investors warm to tokenized products—and whether the liquidity Fission provides can scale without introducing new risks into settlement processes that have, for better or worse, evolved over decades to manage precisely those concerns.
