Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Capital Partners With Kaio to Explore On-Chain RWAs
Traditional finance just got a blockchain wake-up call.
Mubadala Capital, the investment arm of Abu Dhabi's $300 billion sovereign wealth fund, is diving into tokenized real-world assets. Their new partnership with digital infrastructure firm Kaio signals a seismic shift—institutional money is finally building on-chain bridges to physical value.
Why This Move Matters
Forget speculative memecoins. This is about digitizing the bedrock of global wealth: real estate, commodities, and institutional debt. Tokenization slashes settlement times from days to minutes, unlocks 24/7 markets, and creates fractional ownership models that were previously impossible. Mubadala isn't just dipping a toe; they're architecting the plumbing for trillion-dollar asset classes to flow onto public ledgers.
The Cynical Take
Let's be real—this is also a brilliant hedge. While traditional portfolios bleed from inflation and geopolitical risk, on-chain RWAs offer a transparent, programmable alternative. It's the ultimate portfolio diversification play: park sovereign wealth in digital assets that actually represent something, unlike the hollow promises peddled by some legacy finance products.
The partnership cuts through bureaucratic red tape, bypasses outdated custodial systems, and builds a direct pipeline between institutional capital and blockchain utility. The message is clear: the future of value isn't just digital—it's verifiable, divisible, and permanently on the record.
Mubadala Capital Manages $430B Across Global Markets
Mubadala Capital oversees and advises on more than $430 billion across private equity, credit, real estate and alternative strategies.
It operates as a subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s major sovereign wealth funds.
The group’s broader digital-asset positioning has drawn attention recently. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, another Mubadala subsidiary, held at least $500 million in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF.
In Tuesday’s announcement, Fatima Al Noaimi and Max Franzetti, co-heads of Mubadala Capital Solutions, said the goal is to work with regulatory-aligned infrastructure to understand how tokenization can broaden access to institutional-grade vehicles.
Big news! We are proud to announce our collaboration with @Mubadala Capital to explore tokenized access to their private market investment strategies.
By leveraging our compliant tokenization framework, we are enabling new global access channels while maintaining the highest… pic.twitter.com/uKRkn8mTJu
Kaio brings prior experience in the sector, having helped structure tokenized feeder funds for firms such as BlackRock, Brevan Howard and Hamilton Lane.
The company has moved more than $200 million in institutional assets onchain and says the Mubadala initiative underscores momentum behind onchain investment products.
“This launch demonstrates how traditional institutional capital is now scaling onchain,” Kaio CEO Shrey Rastogi said.
The MOVE places Mubadala among a growing cohort of institutional players studying whether tokenized mechanisms can cut operational friction and eventually expand global participation.
CoinShares data shows strong demand for RWAs in 2025, particularly tokenized US Treasurys, which grew from $3.9 billion to $8.6 billion this year. The firm expects the trend to continue into 2026 as appetite for dollar-based yields remains elevated.
Infrastructure is also evolving to support the shift. On Wednesday, Polygon deployed a hard fork aimed at strengthening performance for high-frequency applications such as stablecoins and tokenized RWAs.
RWA Tokenization Gains Momentum
On Monday, Libeara, the blockchain infrastructure platform backed by Standard Chartered’s venture arm SC Ventures, rolled out a new tokenized Gold investment fund in Singapore, bringing one of the world’s oldest safe-haven assets onto digital rails.
The fund, launched in partnership with FundBridge Capital, allows professional investors to gain exposure to gold through blockchain-based tokens issued on Libeara’s ledger.
In a recent research, Web3 digital property firm Animoca Brands said that tokenization of RWAs could unlock a $400 trillion traditional finance market.
Animoca researchers Andrew Ho and Ming Ruan said the global market for private credit, treasury debt, commodities, stocks, alternative funds, and bonds represents a vast runway for growth.
“The estimated $400 trillion addressable TradFi market underscores the potential growth runway for RWA tokenization,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, according to the 2025 Skynet RWA Security Report, the market for tokenized RWAs could grow to $16 trillion by 2030.
