The cryptocurrency treasury company ETHZilla (ETHZ) has taken a strategic step in the on-chain credit field by acquiring a 20% fully diluted stake in the automotive finance AI startup Karus.
This $10 million deal includes $3 million in cash and $7 million in ETHZilla stock, enabling the company to integrate Karus's underwriting AI model into its blockchain stack to issue tokenized automotive loan portfolios.
According to a Wednesday announcement, Karus's decision engine is trained on over 20 million historical automotive loan outcomes and has assessed over $5 billion in loans at the time of issuance, providing ETHZilla with a pre-built modeling dataset to construct AI-segmented pools with on-chain settlement. The first tokenized portfolios are planned to launch in early 2026.
Karus's network of automotive dealers, banks, and credit unions provides ETHZilla with a significant channel for potential loan portfolios for future on-chain securitization. ETHZilla estimates that every $100 million deployed to Karus modeling tokens could generate $9 million to $12 million in adjusted EBITDA—an operating profit metric before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
Under the agreement, ETHZilla will occupy one seat on Karus's board and gain certain governance rights. Karus's supporters include major investors Stage Global Partners, as well as Tacoma Venture Fund and Capital Eleven.
According to SEC data, as of December 2024, automotive loans represent a significant portion of the U.S. asset-backed securities market, with an outstanding amount of approximately $1.6 trillion.
John Kristoff, ETHZilla's head of investor relations, told Cointelegraph that this acquisition provides access to loan exposures that were previously limited to large institutional investment firms participating in complex securitization structures.
According to CoinGecko, ETHZilla is currently the sixth-largest Ethereum treasury company, holding 94,030 ETH on its balance sheet.
The tokenized debt market is expected to accelerate in 2025, with institutions increasingly using blockchain rails to issue and trade fixed-income products.
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries and tokenized private credit have emerged as the two largest segments of the burgeoning tokenized debt market, bringing government debt and corporate loans on-chain.
According to RWA.xyz, tokenized Treasuries have grown to $9.21 billion, more than triple the $2.68 billion from a year ago.
This shift is driven by major asset management firms, with BlackRock's BUIDL fund currently holding approximately $2.3 billion in tokenized Treasuries, and Franklin Templeton's U.S. government money market fund holding about $827 million.
The tokenized private credit market has been dominated by Figure, which accounts for $13.98 billion of the industry's $19.02 billion market cap.
This blockchain-based lending institution went public on Nasdaq on September 11, after repeatedly raising its listing price due to surging demand for its IPO.
Related: Binance's newly launched children's cryptocurrency education app "Junior" sparks polarized reactions
Original article: “ETHZilla Acquires Stake in Karus, Tokenizing AI-Modeled Auto Loan Portfolios”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
