Harvard University’s endowment has made a striking pivot toward digital assets, revealing a $443 million position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) — now its largest reported holding among U.S.-listed equities.
A newly filed 13F report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows the endowment owned 6.8 million IBIT shares at the end of Q3 2025. That stake represents just over 20% of the portfolio Harvard publicly reports for its U.S.-listed equity investments.
The move stands out because major endowments typically avoid ETFs in favor of private equity, venture capital, real estate, and other long-horizon strategies. Harvard’s decision to allocate such a substantial portion of its public equity book to a spot bitcoin ETF underscores how unconventional this step is.
While the investment is meaningful within the context of its public equity allocation, it is still modest when viewed against Harvard’s more than $55 billion endowment — amounting to less than 1% of total assets. Even so, the position places Harvard among the top 20 holders of IBIT, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
The filing also confirms that Harvard has taken direct exposure to bitcoin during a period of price softness, with the cryptocurrency falling over 5% in the past week to around $96,000.
IBIT remains the world’s largest spot bitcoin ETF, holding nearly $75 billion in net assets, per data from SoSoValue.
