2026 RWA Key Financing: Sony, SBI Support Startale, Why Tokenized Securities Are Becoming the New Favorite in Capital?

As the crypto market gradually moves toward regulation and mainstream adoption, tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is seen as a key bridge connecting traditional finance and Web3.

Recently, Startale Group—which is supported by Sony and the SBI Group—announced the completion of a $63 million fundraising round, and has teamed up with the well-known RWA protocol Ondo Finance to deepen its tokenized securities business. This move is not only a “strength meets strength” alliance at the capital level, but also reveals a structural shift in Asia toward on-chain financial infrastructure and asset issuance at the platform level.

Why are traditional financial giants moving into tokenized securities in dense numbers right now?

In the first quarter of 2026, the RWA space shows a clear “Asia acceleration” pattern. Traditional financial institutions are no longer limited to strategic investments or waiting in the wings; they are bringing on-chain finance into their core business footprint by directly participating in infrastructure buildout.

As a core Web3 infrastructure node co-incubated by Sony and SBI, the backdrop for Startale Group’s current $63 million fundraising round is the concentrated realization of traditional capital’s expectations for a “regulated on-chain financial market.” Sony’s broad presence across consumer electronics, entertainment, and finance, together with SBI’s long-term focus on crypto assets and digital securities, jointly form the underlying foundation of this institutional-level RWA push.

How does the combination of capital and technology drive on-chain finance to take hold?

Startale Group’s value is not only reflected in the funding amount, but also in the underlying infrastructure it builds—especially the blockchain network it co-developed with Sony—which provides a scalable, compliant environment for tokenized assets that meets Japanese financial regulatory requirements. And as a protocol focused on tokenized U.S. Treasuries and securities, Ondo Finance provides a mature product architecture and liquidity management capabilities.

Their cooperation, in practice, constructs a complete closed loop: “a compliant permissioned chain + an asset issuance protocol + an institutional distribution layer.” In this model, issuers can meet KYC and AML requirements through Startale’s on-chain compliance layer, execute asset partitioning and trading via Ondo’s smart contracts, and ultimately reach traditional investors through established channels of Sony, SBI, and Mizuho.

Under a compliance framework, what are the costs and trade-offs of this model?

Any process that tokenizes traditional financial assets will inevitably involve trade-offs between efficiency and decentralization. Within the collaboration framework between Startale and Ondo, compliance is placed as the top priority. This means that participant identity verification, whitelist controls over asset transfers, and even smart contract upgradability and permission management are closer to traditional securities custody systems than to a fully decentralized DeFi model. While this structure reduces regulatory risk and increases institutional participation willingness, it also sacrifices some of the openness and permissionless nature of on-chain finance. For the industry, this is not a simple matter of good or bad; it is a path choice under different development stages. In Asian markets—especially Japan—compliance-first is a necessary condition for institutional-grade RWA to be realized.

How does the Asian RWA map shift because of this collaboration?

From a regional competitive perspective, for a long time the Asian RWA market has been characterized by a “two-city contest” between Singapore and Hong Kong, with Japan relatively low-profile. Startale’s current funding round and its deep cooperation with Ondo, however, signal that Japan—leveraging the combined strength of local financial conglomerates and large enterprises—is building a complete on-chain financial closed loop. The funding pool includes not only Sony and SBI but also traditional bank capital such as Mizuho Financial Group, giving this ecosystem clear advantages on both the asset side (corporate bonds, receivables) and the funding side (institutional investors, retail bank customers). Compared with that, other Asian financial hubs have been swaying between “native crypto innovation” and “traditional finance integration,” which gives Japan a time window in this round of RWA competition.

What evolution paths may emerge in the future?

Based on current trends, the development of tokenized securities may follow three main paths.

1. First, a “closed compliant ecosystem” represented by Startale, where asset issuance, transfers, and clearing are completed within a permissioned chain or compliant sidechain—well suited for large institutions and the corporate bond market.
2. Second, “cross-chain interoperability for RWA,” meaning that tokenized assets are introduced into mainstream DeFi protocols via cross-chain bridges to improve asset efficiency and liquidity—this requires higher-level technical and regulatory coordination.
3. Third, a “hybrid model,” where underlying assets are registered on a compliant chain, while trading and lending functions interact privately with mainstream DeFi using technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs. Judging from the current collaboration between Startale and Ondo, the former clearly leans more toward path one, but with technology evolving and regulation becoming clearer, a migration toward path three may be more likely.

Under the institutional-grade RWA surge, what potential risks and limitations exist?

Although the inflow of capital and big players provides enormous room for imagination for RWA, potential risks should not be ignored either.

1. First is regulatory risk: although Japan has already established a relatively robust regulatory framework for digital assets, when tokenized securities involve cross-border capital flows, they still face compliance frictions across different jurisdictions.
2. Second is technical risk: when on-chain assets face smart contract vulnerabilities or mistakes in private key management, they may encounter asset loss pathways that differ from traditional financial systems.
3. Third is liquidity risk: although tokenized securities have the characteristics of being divisible and programmable, the depth of the secondary market still depends on institutional market making and ecosystem participation; in the short term, it is difficult to match traditional bond markets.
4. Finally, over-reliance on a single ecosystem or single underlying infrastructure may create new centralized risks in the future, which is in tension with Web3’s underlying spirit.

Summary

Startale Group secured a $63 million funding round led by traditional giants such as Sony, SBI, and Mizuho, and—together with Ondo Finance—has moved to build tokenized securities. This marks a new stage for the Asian RWA market: “a compliant closed loop” and “industry capital-led.” This collaboration not only validates the feasibility of on-chain finance at the institutional level, but also establishes Japan’s strategic foothold in the Asian RWA competition. Going forward, as more traditional assets are tokenized, tokenized securities will continue to seek a balance among efficiency, compliance, and openness, and the experience accumulated in this process will determine whether Web3 can truly unlock trillion-dollar-scale traditional financial markets.

FAQ

1. What are the specific collaboration models between Startale Group and Sony and SBI? Startale Group is the core infrastructure provider jointly planned by Sony and SBI in the Web3 space, mainly offering compliant blockchain networks and development tools. Sony provides technology and industrial resources, SBI provides financial and crypto industry experience, and the three parties jointly drive the rollout of on-chain finance in Japan and across Asia.

2. What role does Ondo Finance play in this collaboration? As a provider of RWA asset issuance and the protocol layer, Ondo Finance integrates its modular products in tokenized securities, U.S. Treasuries, and more with Startale’s infrastructure, helping issuers quickly build compliant tokenized assets and connect to liquidity.

3. What does the $63 million fundraising mean for the RWA track? The size of this round is relatively rare within the Asian RWA infrastructure sector, indicating a real level of substantive confidence from traditional industrial capital and financial capital in the on-chain finance track. More importantly, it shows that the “large conglomerate + financial institution + compliant public chain” model is already replicable in Asia.

4. What is the fundamental difference between tokenized securities and traditional securities trading? Tokenized securities automatically execute ownership registration, clearing, and settlement processes via smart contracts. In theory, this can shorten settlement cycles (from T+2 to T+0), reduce intermediary costs, and support programmable functions such as dividends distribution and voting. However, its compliance and liquidity are still limited by the relevant jurisdiction and the maturity of the ecosystem.

5. How can retail investors participate in this trend? At present, institutional-grade RWA tokenized securities mainly target qualified investors or institutions. For regular users, they can follow relevant token and protocol updates in the RWA track via platforms such as Gate, but they should also be aware of the risk differences between “protocol tokens” and “underlying asset tokens.”