KAIO Secures $8 Million in Funding from Tether to Tokenize Emirati Investments

In a strategic funding round, KAIO, a regulated tokenization firm in Abu Dhabi, has announced that it has raised $8 million with the support of Tether and several other prominent crypto and institutional investors. This investment brings the company's total funding to $19 million, with new investors including Systemic Ventures and returning investors such as Further Ventures, Laser Digital, and Brevan Howard Digital. KAIO is focused on creating infrastructure that enables asset managers to distribute their funds on the blockchain. The firm has successfully tokenized products from major 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, including the launch of an on-chain fund with Mubadala Capital, a private equity firm managing $385 billion in assets. By tokenizing institutional funds, KAIO aims to reduce the barriers to entry for investors, with minimum investments as low as $100 for eligible users, significantly lower than the typical thresholds for institutional investments. Tether's involvement in this funding round highlights the potential for stablecoin flows to be channeled into regulated investment products, leveraging the liquidity of USDT, the most widely used stablecoin with a supply of $185 billion. According to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, "KAIO's innovative approach unlocks new paths for capital formation and investment by bringing institutional-grade assets on-chain and making them more widely accessible, thereby expanding participation in global financial markets." KAIO's platform is designed with compliance in mind, supporting 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.