Harvard Endowment Takes Rare Leap Into Bitcoin With $443M Bet on BlackRock’s IBIT


Harvard University’s endowment disclosed a $443 million stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), making the fund’s largest known equity position a bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

According to the latest from the university 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the investment fund held 6.8 million shares of IBIT as of the third quarter of 2025. The position accounts for just over 20% of its US public assets.

Institutional investors, such as Harvard, generally avoid exchange-traded funds, instead favoring private equity, real estate and direct investments. That makes this move in IBIT especially remarkable.

For context, Harvard’s entire endowment exceeds $55 billion, meaning that the IBIT investment represents less than 1% of total assets. However, it ranks Harvard among the fund’s top 20 holders according to to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

The filing reveals that Harvard University’s endowment is investing in bitcoin. It comes at a time when the the price of the cryptocurrency has fallen more than 5% in the past week to about $96,000.

IBIT is the world’s largest spot bitcoin ETF, with nearly $75 billion in net assets according to SoSoValue. data.