Tether makes its first investment in the asset tokenization sector, and KAIO has secured $8 million in strategic financing.

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

This article was originally published on April 22, updated on April 30 with KAIO's tokenomics section, and updated on May 6 concerning the TGE section.

On May 6, KAIO announced on the X platform that it will conduct the TGE today at 21:00 Beijing time. Additionally, Coinbase announced it would add support for KAIO (KAIO). Exchanges such as Bitget, Gate, and KuCoin will also be listing KAIO, while Bitget Launchpool will launch KAIO.

On April 30, the asset tokenization protocol KAIO officially released its tokenomics for its utility and governance token KAIO and announced the establishment of the KAIO Foundation, which will serve 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. In the distribution scheme, the community and liquidity incentives account for the largest share at 37.5%, with 12.5% unlocked on the day of the TGE (Token Generation Event) for liquidity supply. Early investors are allocated 31%, the foundation receives 17%, and the team gets 11%, with an additional 3.5% designated for Pre-TGE sales.

Regarding unlock rules, the shares for the team and investors are entirely locked on TGE day, with a 12-month lock-up period, followed by a linear release over 24 months. The remaining shares for the community and liquidity have a 6-month lock-up period, then are released linearly over 60 months. The foundation's shares also have a 6-month lock-up period, to be fully released over 36 months.

The core utility of the token encompasses four aspects: serving as an access mechanism for acquiring KAIO protocol products, capturing protocol revenue linked to the total locked value growth, potential staking and reward functions in the future, and providing governance voting rights over key protocol decisions and fund allocations.

A one-stop yield product for retail users, KASH, is planned for launch in Q2 2026, and applications are now open. Currently, apart from the KASH application channel, KAIO has not announced other token acquisition pathways or point systems.

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

With this funding injection, KAIO's total financing reaches $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 collaboration 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 a lead investor, clearly marking the stablecoin giant's strategic shift from internal construction to direct investment in the real-world asset sector.

Infrastructure Focused on On-Chain Institutional Funds

KAIO is an infrastructure provider that builds underlying protocols specifically for real-world assets, formerly known as Libre Capital. The company aims to address compliance, liquidity, and interoperability challenges faced by regulated institutional funds in a decentralized financial environment by building a sovereign application chain.

Its core mission is to fully migrate traditional institutional funds onto the blockchain track. In its business model, KAIO does not directly issue assets but provides technological infrastructure for large asset management firms, enabling them to distribute fund products on-chain through compliant tokenization structures.

The fund products that have already launched come from institutions such as BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and Hamilton Lane, deployed across various blockchain networks including Sui, Solana, and Base.

According to company-disclosed data, the KAIO platform has processed over $500 million in transaction volume to date, with tokenized assets totaling approximately $100 million. The key to its business model lies in meeting regulatory requirements in jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands and Singapore through automated rules embedded in on-chain code.

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

As part of its product matrix expansion, KAIO launched a yield token product named KASH in February this year. This product diversifies a basket of blue-chip funds from global leading asset management firms such as BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Laser Digital into a tokenized format. Applications are now open.

Team Background

The leadership team at KAIO possesses a composite background in traditional finance and digital assets. The company's CEO, Shrey Rastogi, has an education background from the London Business School, and prior to joining KAIO, he worked at McKinsey & Company focusing on capital markets infrastructure research and consulting.

The COO, Olivier Dang, has over ten years of experience at Nomura Securities, having served as the head of venture capital at Nomura’s digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital and as a board member.

This background positions him as a key figure connecting KAIO with the mainstream financial ecosystem. Overall, the team exhibits a professional appearance composed of former McKinsey consultants, Nomura executives, and experienced smart contract developers.

Tether's Strong Financial Foundation and Strategic Intent

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

At the same time, according to DeFiLlama data, the total market value of global stablecoins also surpassed $320 billion for the first time, reflecting a rapid expansion in market demand for on-chain liquidity.

Regarding asset reserves, according to Tether's latest certified report as of year-end 2025, total reserve assets amount to approximately $192.88 billion, while USDT-related liabilities are about $186.54 billion. The excess reserve buffer is around $6.4 billion, ensuring that all circulating USDT is backed by surplus support.

The core components of the reserves are U.S. Treasury securities and repurchase agreements, accounting for more than 70 percent. Furthermore, Tether has reported a net profit exceeding $10 billion for the entire year of 2025, providing a solid financial foundation for its strategic investments.

Concerning plans 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, and future expanded structured products and ETF shares. Theoretically, this could introduce substantial on-chain native funds into the traditional financial market.

The Mubadala Capital that KAIO is collaborating with is the alternative asset management subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, whose parent company has assets under management of $385 billion, projected to grow by 17% in 2025, making it the 15th largest sovereign wealth fund worldwide.

Representative investments include North American industrial laundry systems from 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 focused on traditional alternative assets, it has begun actively exploring the possibilities of real-world asset tokenization starting in 2025. In December 2025, it announced a partnership with KAIO to explore compliance-based on-chain tokenization of Mubadala Capital's private market strategies (such as private equity and real estate), to provide digital access for institutions and qualified investors, and it plans to launch on-chain funds to reduce investment barriers and enhance liquidity.

Competitive Landscape and Differentiated Positioning

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

Leading the institutional tokenization platform, Securitize directly serves BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, with a total tokenized asset scale exceeding $4 billion and cumulative financing of approximately $132 million, led by firms such as BlackRock and Morgan Stanley. It announced a SPAC merger listing in 2025, with an estimated valuation of $1.25 billion.

DeFi-native infrastructure Centrifuge focuses on institutional-level RWA infrastructure (including fund tokenization), achieving compliance through SPV legal structures and implementing DeFi liquidity via NFT/token pools (integrated with Aave, MakerDAO, etc.). It has tokenized funds like the Janus Henderson Treasury Fund (JTRSY) and CLO funds, which greatly overlap in practicality with KAIO.

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

Despite facing strong competition, KAIO has established a unique differentiated positioning in the compliant digital asset market in the Middle East and Asia due to its sovereign application chain architecture, deep integration within the Abu Dhabi International Financial Centre regulatory ecosystem, and exclusive advantage from directly partnering with Mubadala Capital to launch on-chain funds.