Capital markets News

Tokenized Apollo fund launched on 6 public blockchains

securitize apollo tokenized funds

Today tokenization firm Securitize announced a partnership with alternative asset manager Apollo Global (AUM $512 billion) to tokenize one of its funds. Securitize is creating a new tokenized feeder fund for the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (“ACRED”). The fund will be available on six blockchains following Securitize going live with the blockchain interoperability protocol Wormhole.

As with most other Securitize funds, access is not available to the average retail investor. In this case there’s a minimum investment of $50,000 for accredited investors that can only be accessed via Securitize Markets as the broker-dealer. Securitize is also the tokenization partner for BlackRock’s BUIDL money market fund and Hamilton Lane and KKR feeder funds.

Coinbase Asset Management and Kraken are amongst the early investors in ACRED.

Wormhole for cross chain interoperability

Turning to Wormhole, Securitize recently went live with the cross chain interoperability protocol, which was founded by Jump Crypto (part of Jump Trading) and is backed by Brevan Howard and others. The protocol supports more than 30 blockchains, with Securitize initially making ACRED available on the Aptos, Avalanche, Ethereum, Ink, Polygon, and Solana networks. Wormhole works by locking the token on the original blockchain and minting a wrapped version on the other chain.

“This tokenization not only provides an on-chain solution for Apollo Diversified Credit Fund, but also could pave the way for broader access to private markets through next generation product innovation, greater secondary liquidity, and efficiency over time,” said Apollo Partner Christine Moy. Ms Moy was previously a senior executive at JP Morgan’s Onyx division (renamed to Kinexys).

Apollo first took an interest in blockchain back in 2021 when it inked a deal with Figure Technologies, the founder of the Provenance blockchain, and subsequently invested. In 2023 Apollo collaborated with JP Morgan to explore the potential for tokenization and personalized discretionary portfolios as part of Singapore Project Guardian experiments.