Skip to content
HOME / WIKI / projects / KAIO
Wiki entry · projectsUpdated 2026-07-26

KAIO

KAIO is a UAE-based tokenisation platform that issues and administers tokenised versions of institutional investment funds for onchain distribution to qualified investors, operating out of ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market) as the current brand of the platform formerly known as Libre, which was co-founded by Laser Digital, the digital-asset arm of Nomura (Ledger Insights). The platform carried USD 144 million in tokenised funds as of 23 July 2026, with Hamilton Lane, Brevan Howard, and Laser Digital among the managers distributing products through it, and its most consequential mandate to date is Mubadala Capital's tokenised private markets strategy launched in July 2026 across Base, Solana, and Sui (CoinDesk). For a tokenisation operator, KAIO is the working example of the united arab emirates free-zone route for tokenised alternatives: sovereign-adjacent manager, multi-chain distribution, and a listed-company treasury allocation on the holder side.

Naming

KAIO is the current brand; Libre is the legacy name. Coverage and older documentation reference Libre for the platform's earlier fund tokenisation work with Hamilton Lane, Brevan Howard, and Laser Digital, and the same client roster now sits under the KAIO brand. Treat the two names as one platform, with KAIO canonical going forward, on the same convention this knowledge base applies to Kinexys (current) versus Onyx (legacy) for JPMorgan's digital-assets unit.

The Mubadala Capital launch

Mubadala Capital, the asset management subsidiary of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, launched a tokenised version of one of its evergreen private markets strategies for qualified investors using KAIO's infrastructure, announced 23 July 2026 (Ledger Insights; CoinDesk). On scale, Ledger Insights describes the manager as managing and advising on over USD 600 billion, with its core alternatives businesses managing more than USD 60 billion across private equity, credit, venture capital, and co-investment platforms, while CoinDesk reports about USD 430 billion overseen, both as of 23 July 2026; the likelier read is different perimeter definitions (managed-and-advised versus overseen) rather than a genuine dispute, but both figures are recorded here pending clarification. The fund is available on 3 chains, Coinbase's Base network, Solana, and Sui, and had attracted roughly USD 75 million in onchain total value locked from both traditional and digital-asset investors as of 23 July 2026. Coinbase is taking exposure to the fund on its own corporate balance sheet, with the size undisclosed, an early example of a publicly traded crypto company holding a tokenised private markets product as a treasury asset. Max Franzetti, head of Mubadala Capital Solutions, framed the launch as extending the strategy's differentiated access "to a new class of qualified investors without compromising the institutional discipline that defines how we invest".

Why it matters

  • The launch puts a sovereign-affiliated alternatives manager onchain through a UAE platform, which is the operational-participation tier rather than the logo tier: real assets gathered (USD 75 million as of 23 July 2026), named chains, and a named balance-sheet holder in Coinbase.
  • The USD 75 million Mubadala raise landing on a platform carrying USD 144 million in total as of 23 July 2026 shows how concentrated the platform's asset base is in its newest mandate; KAIO's trajectory is a useful read on whether tokenised alternatives distribution consolidates around a small set of specialist issuers or fragments across manager-owned rails.
  • The 3-chain launch pattern (Base, Solana, Sui) suggests distribution-led design rather than a single-venue listing, which is the pattern to compare against single-chain products from Securitize and Franklin Templeton.

Open questions

  • Which venues and wallets actually originated the roughly USD 75 million in onchain assets, and how much sits with Coinbase's own balance-sheet position.
  • The fund's redemption terms, NAV (net asset value) cadence, and custody arrangement; none of these are in current public coverage.
  • KAIO's regulatory wrapper in detail: which ADGM permissions the operating entity holds, and whether distribution into other jurisdictions relies on private-placement exemptions.
  • Whether the Hamilton Lane and Brevan Howard products carried over from the Libre era remain live at material size under the KAIO brand.

Related