Libre Capital

Libre Capital launched in 2023 as a joint venture between two institutional-grade backers: WebN Group, Brevan Howard's incubation hub for fintech and Web3 innovation, and Laser Digital, the digital assets arm of Nomura. The company was built to serve a specific gap in the market — giving accredited and institutional investors a fully compliant, on-chain pathway into alternative asset funds that had historically been accessible only through traditional brokerage relationships and lengthy subscription processes.

In July 2025, Libre Capital rebranded to KAIO (kaio.xyz), signalling a broader strategic vision. The rebrand coincided with the launch of the Laser Digital Bitcoin Diversified Yield Fund and the introduction of KAIO AppChain architecture designed to make tokenized fund positions portable across the broader multi-chain landscape. The librecapital.com domain now redirects to kaio.xyz.

What the Protocol Does

The core offering is an on-chain gateway for institutional and accredited investors to subscribe to, hold, trade, and borrow against tokenized versions of regulated funds. Unlike early tokenization experiments that placed assets on-chain without genuine utility, KAIO structures each tokenized fund position as an omnichain token that can serve as a DeFi primitive — used as collateral for smart contract-powered loans, traded on secondary markets, and moved across blockchains without losing its regulatory wrapper.

The platform operates across three primary functions:

True Ownership: Investors receive tokenized fund shares that they can hold in self-custody, sell on secondary markets, or transfer on-chain without going through the fund manager directly.

Collateral Utilization: Fund positions can be pledged against collateralized lending facilities, unlocking liquidity without requiring redemption and the associated lock-up delays common in alternative asset vehicles.

Cross-Chain Portability: Assets issued through KAIO's infrastructure can move across more than 120 blockchains via LayerZero integration, enabling institutional fund positions to interact with DeFi applications on Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, and other networks.

Fund Lineup

As of mid-2026, KAIO offers on-chain access to five institutional funds:

• CASH — BlackRock's institutional money market fund. Minimum investment $100, with $37.3M in on-chain AUM.
• SCOPE — Hamilton Lane's Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, a diversified multi-manager private credit vehicle targeting monthly liquidity and consistent cash yield. Minimum investment $10,000, with $16M in on-chain AUM.
• VOLT — Laser Digital's crypto basis strategy. Minimum $10,000, $19.5M AUM.
• MACRO — Brevan Howard's hedge fund strategy. Minimum $10,000, $18M AUM.
• MCAS — Mubadala Capital's private equity vehicle. Minimum $100,000, with $64.7M in on-chain AUM — the largest single fund offering on the platform.

Total TVL across these five funds stood at approximately $155.5 million at the time of the KAIO rebrand, with over $200 million in tokenized assets transacted through the infrastructure cumulatively since launch.

Solana Integration

Libre Capital launched its Solana integration in July 2024 with the deployment of Hamilton Lane's SCOPE fund. The Libre Gateway DApp went live on Solana, enabling accredited investors to subscribe to SCOPE and access its private credit portfolio directly on-chain. At launch, Libre's CEO Dr. Avtar Sehra described the move as "a huge step forward to enable access to wealth and treasury management tools."

Solana was selected as an early chain target because of its throughput characteristics and the institutional-grade user experience it enables compared to slower settlement environments. The KAIO architecture subsequently expanded Solana compatibility to include cross-chain fund positions via LayerZero, meaning tokenized assets issued on other chains can be bridged into and used within the Solana ecosystem.

Technology Architecture

KAIO operates through what it calls an AppChain — a purpose-built chain layer that handles compliance logic, fund subscriptions, and token issuance in a regulated environment. Conduit Asset Management Pte. Ltd., licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, serves as the investment manager entity on the regulated side of the stack.

The AppChain model separates the compliance-heavy issuance layer from public chain deployment. Once fund tokens are issued on the AppChain, they can be bridged to Base, Solana, Sui, Sei, Injective, and the full LayerZero-connected ecosystem, where they function like any other token in DeFi while carrying their regulatory properties.

An upcoming product called KASH is described as "permissionless, institutional-grade, onchain yield" and is currently in a waitlist phase. It represents a move toward making institutional-quality yield accessible to a broader audience without the accreditation barriers that restrict the current fund lineup.

Funding and Backers

Libre Capital raised an $11 million seed round backed by Laser Digital, WebN Group, Karatage, Further Ventures, Lyrik Ventures, and Brevan Howard Digital. The strategic backing from both Nomura's digital assets arm and Brevan Howard's digital vehicle gives the platform credibility in traditional institutional channels — the same channels whose capital it is trying to move on-chain.

Notable milestones beyond fund launches include a $500 million Telegram Bond Fund in collaboration with the TON Foundation, described as the largest blockchain corporate debt project at the time.

Team

Leadership includes CEO Dr. Avtar Sehra and COO Olivier Dang, who has articulated the company's thesis that "tokenized treasury bills were merely the foundation" and that the KAIO rebrand positions the platform to become "an interoperable space where real-world and crypto yields coexist."

The company is UAE-headquartered, reflecting proximity to the Gulf-region sovereign wealth and institutional capital that forms a significant part of its target investor base — as illustrated by the Mubadala Capital fund inclusion.

Market Position

Libre Capital / KAIO operates in the institutional RWA tokenization segment alongside platforms like Ondo Finance, Securitize, and Figure. Its differentiation rests on the breadth of fund types it handles — spanning money market, private credit, hedge fund, private equity, and crypto carry strategies — and on its cross-chain architecture that lets tokenized positions move across DeFi ecosystems without losing their compliance wrapper. The platform's focus on collateralized lending against fund positions, rather than just passive on-chain holding, is a design choice that aims to give institutional holders a practical reason to tokenize beyond novelty.