Unprecedented! A trillion-dollar whale $USDT is making its first "dip" to buy the dip. Can Wall Street's old ticket land on the new continent?

Stablecoin giant Tether has taken a historic step. It has, for the first time as a lead investor, invested $8 million in an asset tokenization infrastructure company called KAIO. Participants in this strategic funding round also include Systemic Ventures, Further Ventures, and Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Nomura Securities. After the funding, KAIO’s total raised capital reached $19 million.

The company plans to expand its business from fund tokenization to broader asset classes such as credit products, structured instruments, and exchange-traded funds. At the same time, KAIO announced a partnership with Mubadala Capital, a subsidiary of the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, to jointly launch on-chain funds. This clearly indicates that Tether’s strategy is shifting from internal development to external direct investments.

KAIO was formerly known as Libre Capital, which is essentially an infrastructure builder creating underlying protocols for real-world assets. Its core goal is to build a sovereign application chain aimed at solving compliance, liquidity, and interoperability challenges faced by institutional funds when onboarding assets to the blockchain. It does not issue assets directly but provides technical infrastructure for large asset management firms to distribute products on-chain through compliant tokenization structures.

Currently, its platform hosts fund products from BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and Hamilton Lane, deployed across multiple networks such as $SUI, $SOL, and $BASE. The platform has processed over $500 million in total transaction volume, with tokenized assets totaling about $100 million. By embedding regulatory rules into on-chain code, it has successfully lowered the investment threshold for institutional funds to the minimum of $100 for qualified investors. In February this year, it also launched a yield token product called KASH, which bundles blue-chip funds from institutions like BlackRock.

KAIO’s team has a background spanning traditional finance and the crypto space. CEO Shrey Rastogi previously focused on capital markets infrastructure research at McKinsey, while COO Olivier Dang has over ten years of experience at Nomura Securities and served as venture capital head at its digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital. This diverse background is key to connecting with mainstream financial institutions.

Tether’s involvement is directly related to its massive scale. Shortly after KAIO announced its funding, the market cap of $USDT reached a record high of approximately $188 billion. Meanwhile, the total global stablecoin market cap first surpassed $320 billion, indicating a rapid expansion in on-chain liquidity demand.

According to Tether’s report as of 2025, its total reserve assets amount to about $192.88 billion, with liabilities around $186.54 billion, resulting in an excess reserve of approximately $6.4 billion. Over 70% of the reserves are in U.S. Treasuries and repurchase agreements. Throughout 2025, Tether recorded net profits exceeding $10 billion, providing a solid financial foundation for its strategic investments. Its goal may be to channel the liquidity of $USDT into regulated products like BlackRock money market funds tokenized via the KAIO platform.

Partner Mubadala Capital has a strong background, with its parent company Mubadala Investment Company managing assets worth $385 billion, making it the 15th largest sovereign wealth fund globally. Since 2025, Mubadala Capital has actively explored compliant tokenization of its private equity, real estate, and other strategies.

On the competitive front, KAIO faces several rivals. Leading institutional tokenization platform Securitize directly services BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, with tokenized assets exceeding $4 billion. DeFi-native infrastructure Centrifuge focuses on compliant tokenization through special purpose vehicles and integrates with $AAVE, $MKR, among others, with a total value locked (TVL) of about $1.99 billion.

Nevertheless, with its sovereign chain architecture, deep integration into Abu Dhabi’s regulatory ecosystem, and exclusive partnership with Mubadala Capital, KAIO has found a differentiated position in the compliant digital asset markets in the Middle East and Asia.

Follow me: Get more real-time analysis and insights on the crypto market! $BTC $ETH $SOL

#Gate13周年现场直击 #WCTC trading contest to share 8 million USDT #Bitcoin rebound