Tokenization, or the process of turning stocks and other real world assets into digital tokens, is fast bridging the worlds of crypto and mainstream finance, and now sovereign wealth funds want in on the action. On Thursday, the Abu Dhabi-owned fund Mubadala Capital announced a partnership with Coinbase and infrastructure provider KAIO to offer a blockchain-native version of Mubadala’s evergreen private markets fund as a regulated token to qualified investors.
Coinbase will use its Base blockchain as one of the networks the token runs on. It will also buy the token itself, which will result in the company adding Mubadala’s fund as one of the investments on its balance sheet. According to the partners, this represents the first time a major U.S. publicly listed company has used regulated tokenized assets for native on-chain treasury management. KAIO will supply the infrastructure needed to turn Mubadala’s fund into a compliant token that eligible buyers can actually hold.
For Mubadala, which is one of Abu Dhabi’s biggest state-owned funds with nearly $400 billion in assets under management, the tokenization launch will serve to expand its potential pool of investors. Until now, investors have primarily come from big-ticket private equity, but KAIO’s CEO, Shrey Rastogi, says that is poised to change.
