Mubadala Capital has entered a partnership with KAIO to evaluate tokenizing private market investments as on-chain RWAs, a move framed around improving liquidity and operational efficiency for institutional allocations. Mubadala Capital manages over $30 billion in private market assets, positioning the initiative within a large-scale, institutional asset-management context.
Compliance-first tokenization of private markets
KAIO will provide the regulated digital infrastructure required to map private-market positions onto permissioned on-chain tokens, emphasizing interoperability and auditability. Tokenization in this context is defined as representing ownership rights or cash flows of an off-chain asset as a digital token on a distributed ledger, enabling more efficient transfer and settlement.
Real-world assets (RWAs) are tangible or contractual economic claims — such as private equity stakes, credit instruments or real estate — that are represented on-chain to enable programmatic transfer and settlement. The collaboration prioritizes compliance and custody primitives suitable for institutional capital, aiming to preserve existing legal wrappers while enabling blockchain-native transfer and recordkeeping.
For node operators and infrastructure teams, the design emphasis will likely run to permissioned validation sets, integration points with custody and KYC/AML systems, and deterministic settlement rails that do not compromise existing custody models. KAIO’s role is described as enabling a controlled bridge between off-chain legal constructs and on-chain token representations without sacrificing institutional control.
The move aligns with Mubadala’s broader strategic posture as part of a sovereign investment company with $330 billion in assets; Mubadala Capital’s recent corporate actions illustrate that posture. The firm’s acquisition of a 68% stake in Fortress Investment Group, a $1 billion commitment to private credit initiatives and multi-billion-dollar partnerships and joint ventures signal intent to marry scale with operational innovation.
The partnership arrives amid a wider industry trend toward RWA tokenization, demonstrated by platforms reporting significant on-chain RWA volumes. Institutional priorities across the sector include increased transparency, faster settlement windows and more granular liquidity provisioning for traditionally illiquid strategies, with networks such as Aptos and Solana cited in connection with large tokenized-asset pipelines.
Mubadala Capital’s engagement with KAIO formalizes an institutional approach to on-chain RWAs that emphasizes regulated infrastructure and legal continuity over speculative decentralization. The collaboration will become operationally meaningful for treasuries and institutional investors if it advances from exploration to live pilots and regulatory clearances that validate integration between custody stacks, compliance frameworks and token settlement rails.