Tether leads the investment in asset tokenization, KAIO receives $8 million in strategic financing.

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

This article was first published on April 22 and updated on April 30 regarding the token economics of KAIO.

On April 30, the asset tokenization protocol KAIO officially announced its utility and governance token economics for the KAIO token, and simultaneously announced the establishment of the KAIO Foundation, which will act as the off-chain manager of the ecosystem, responsible for supporting token governance, protocol development, financial management, and ecological growth.

According to official disclosures, the KAIO token adopts a fixed total supply model, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens and no inflation issuance. In the allocation plan, the community and liquidity incentives account for the largest proportion, reaching 37.5%, with 12.5% unlocked on the day of the TGE (Token Generation Event) for liquidity provision. Early investors receive 31%, the foundation receives 17%, the team receives 11%, and there is also 3.5% allocated for Pre-TGE sales.

Regarding the unlocking rules, the team and investor shares are fully locked on the day of the TGE, with a 12-month lock-up period, followed by linear unlocking over 24 months. The remaining shares for the community and liquidity have a 6-month lock-up period, after which they will be released over 60 months. The foundation's shares also have a 6-month lock-up period and will be fully released within 36 months.

The core utility of the token covers four aspects: serving as an access mechanism for obtaining KAIO protocol products, capturing protocol revenue linked to the growth of the total locked value, potential staking and rewards functionalities in the future, and governance voting rights concerning key protocol decisions and fund allocation.

A one-stop yield product for retail users, KASH, is scheduled for launch in the second quarter of 2026, with applications now open. Currently, apart from the KASH application channel, KAIO has not announced other token acquisition routes or point programs.

On April 20, 2026, KAIO, an asset tokenization infrastructure company regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market, announced the completion of a strategic round of financing of $8 million. This round was led by stablecoin issuer Tether, with participation from Systemic Ventures, Further Ventures, and Nomura Securities' Laser Digital.

After this funding injection, KAIO's total financing amount reached $19 million. The company stated that the new funds will be used to expand its business scope from existing fund tokenization services to a broader range of asset classes, including credit products, structured investment tools, and exchange-traded funds.

At the same time, KAIO also announced a key cooperation plan to launch an on-chain fund in partnership with Mubadala Capital, the alternative asset management arm of the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company.

It is noteworthy that this is the first time Tether has made a strategic investment in an external asset tokenization infrastructure company as the leading investor according to publicly available information. This clearly marks the strategic move of this stablecoin giant from internal construction to direct external investment in the real-world asset sector.

Infrastructure focused on institutional fund tokenization

KAIO is an infrastructure provider specifically designed for real-world assets, originally known as Libre Capital. The company aims to solve compliance, liquidity, and interoperability challenges faced by regulated institutional-grade funds in a decentralized finance environment by building a sovereign application chain.

At its core is a complete migration of traditional institutional funds onto a blockchain track. In its business model, KAIO does not directly issue assets but instead provides technological infrastructure to large asset management companies, enabling them to distribute fund products on-chain through compliant tokenization structures.

Currently, the fund products available are from institutions such as BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and Hamilton Lane, deployed on various blockchain networks including Sui, Solana, and Base.

According to data disclosed by the company, the KAIO platform has handled over $500 million in transaction volume to date, with the tokenized asset scale around $100 million. The key to its business model lies in meeting regulatory requirements in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and Singapore through automated rules embedded with on-chain codes.

While ensuring strict compliance, the platform has significantly lowered the investment threshold for institutional-grade funds to a level where qualified investors can participate starting from a minimum of $100.

As part of product matrix expansion, KAIO launched a yield-generating token product named KASH this year in February. This product leverages the KAIO protocol to bundle blue-chip funds from leading global asset management institutions such as BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Laser Digital into a diversified tokenized basket. Applications are now open.

Team Background

The leadership team of KAIO has a combined background in traditional finance and digital assets. The company’s CEO, Shrey Rastogi, has an educational background from the London Business School. Before joining KAIO, he worked at McKinsey & Company, focusing on research and consulting in capital market infrastructure.

Chief Operating Officer Olivier Dang has over ten years of experience at Nomura Securities and has served as the head of venture capital and a board member in Nomura's digital asset subsidiary, Laser Digital.

This background makes him a key figure connecting KAIO with the ecosystem of mainstream financial institutions. Overall, the team presents a professional profile consisting of former McKinsey consultants, Nomura Securities executives, and experienced smart contract developers.

Tether’s Strong Financial Backing and Strategic Intent

As the leading investor in this financing round, Tether's strategic moves are closely related to its growing market scale. Just after KAIO announced the financing on April 22, the market capitalization of USDT, a stablecoin issued by Tether, reached approximately $188 billion, setting a record high.

At the same time, data from DeFiLlama shows that the total market cap of global stablecoins also exceeded $320 billion for the first time, reflecting the rapidly expanding demand for on-chain liquidity in the market.

In terms of asset reserves, according to Tether's latest certified report as of the end of 2025, its total reserve assets reached approximately $192.88 billion, while liabilities related to USDT were about $186.54 billion. This results in an excess reserve buffer of about $6.4 billion, ensuring that all circulating USDT is backed by excess support.

The core components of the reserves are US Treasury bonds and repurchase agreements, accounting for more than 70%. In addition, Tether recorded net profits of over $10 billion throughout 2025, providing a solid financial foundation for its strategic investments.

Regarding its plan to introduce USDT liquidity into regulated investment products, potential targets may include tokenized BlackRock money market funds, private credit strategy funds through the KAIO platform, as well as future expansions into structured products and ETF share offerings. This move theoretically aims to bring a significant amount of on-chain native funding into traditional financial markets.

Mubadala Capital, with which KAIO is collaborating, is the alternative asset management subsidiary under Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, which has an asset management scale of $385 billion and is expected to grow by 17% in 2025, making it the 15th largest sovereign wealth fund globally.

Its representative portfolio includes North American industrial laundry systems like Alliance Laundry System, the European luxury hotel group Aman Hotels, and the Indian technology platform Reliance Jio Platforms.

Although Mubadala Capital's portfolio has long been centered around traditional alternative assets, it has actively started exploring the possibilities of real-world asset tokenization since 2025. In December 2025, it announced a partnership with KAIO to explore the tokenization of Mubadala Capital's private market strategies (private equity, real estate, etc.) through compliant on-chain methods, providing institutional and accredited investors with digital access. They also plan to launch on-chain funds to lower investment barriers and enhance liquidity.

Competitive Landscape and Differentiated Positioning

In the current real-world asset sector, KAIO faces competition from several established infrastructure providers.

Leading the institutional tokenization platform, Securitize directly provides services for BlackRock's BUIDL fund, and its total tokenized asset scale has exceeded $4 billion, with cumulative financing of about $132 million from investors including BlackRock and Morgan Stanley. In 2025, it announced a SPAC merger listing with an estimated valuation of $1.25 billion.

The DeFi-native infrastructure Centrifuge focuses on institutional-grade RWA infrastructure (including fund tokenization), achieving compliance through SPV legal structures and enabling DeFi liquidity via NFT/token pools (integrated with platforms like Aave and MakerDAO). It has tokenized the Janus Henderson Treasury fund (JTRSY), CLO funds, etc., sharing high utility overlaps with KAIO.

According to DeFiLlama data, Centrifuge currently has a TVL of approximately $1.99 billion. Its token CFG has an FDV of around $168 million and is listed on exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Upbit.

Despite facing strong competition, KAIO has established a unique differentiated position in the Middle East and Asia's compliant digital asset market due to its sovereign application chain architecture, deep integration into the Abu Dhabi International Financial Centre's regulatory ecosystem, and exclusive advantages of directly collaborating with Mubadala Capital to launch on-chain funds.