KAIO Secures $8M in Funding from Tether and Others to Tokenize Emirati Funds

In a strategic funding round, KAIO, a regulated tokenization platform in Abu Dhabi, has raised $8 million with the support of Tether and other prominent crypto and institutional investors. This investment brings the company's total funding to $19 million, with new participants including Systemic Ventures and returning investors such as Further Ventures, Laser Digital, and Brevan Howard Digital. KAIO specializes in creating infrastructure for asset managers to distribute funds on the blockchain. The firm has successfully tokenized products from renowned companies like BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and Hamilton Lane, making them accessible through blockchain-based systems. With this new investment, KAIO plans to expand its offerings to include credit, structured investments, and exchange-traded funds, and is set to launch an on-chain fund in collaboration with Mubadala Capital, an Emirati private equity firm managing $385 billion in assets. By tokenizing institutional funds, KAIO aims to reduce barriers to entry for investors, with minimum investment requirements starting at $100 for eligible users, significantly lower than the typical thresholds for institutional funds. Tether's involvement in this funding round connects the model to stablecoin flows, leveraging the liquidity of USDT, the most widely used stablecoin with a supply of $185 billion, often utilized for cross-border transactions, especially in emerging markets. KAIO intends to channel this liquidity into regulated investment products. According to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, 'KAIO's unique position opens up new avenues for capital formation and investment by bringing institutional-grade assets on-chain and making them more broadly accessible, thereby expanding participation in global financial markets.' KAIO's platform incorporates compliance into its system and supports regulated distribution frameworks in several jurisdictions, including Abu Dhabi, the Cayman Islands, and Singapore. To date, the company has tokenized approximately $100 million in assets and processed over $500 million in transactions.