Apollo Tokenizes $1.2B Private Credit Fund With the Help of Securitize

Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) is the first public on-chain offering for accredited investors of Apollo and also the first integration for Securitize with the Solana blockchain.

Investment firm Apollo, with over $730 billion in assets under management, is now offering investors a tokenized private credit fund, thanks to a collaboration with Securitize, a specialist in security tokens.

The token will be available through the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) feeder fund, making it Apollo's first public on-chain offering for accredited investors. This also marks Securitize's first integration with the Solana blockchain and Ink, a layer-2 network from the Kraken crypto exchange. The tokenized fund will initially launch on Ethereum, Aptos, Avalanche, and Polygon.

Apollo Diversified Credit Fund, with over $1.2 billion in managed assets, invests in corporate direct lending, asset-backed finance, and performing, dislocated, and structured credit, according to the firm. In 2024, the fund reportedly generated an 11.7% return, compared to U.S. Treasuries, which yielded approximately 4.5%.

Christine Moy, a partner leading digital assets, data, and AI strategy at Apollo, explained that the fund was selected due to its daily subscription and net asset value (NAV) structure, which aligns well with the seamless and efficient blockchain-based markets.

"For those that are trying to build a diversified portfolio on-chain, it serves as a higher-yielding complement to stablecoins, tokenized treasuries, and money market funds,” said Moy in an interview. "But it's also a diversifier to the more volatile crypto-native yield products that are out there. So it can help complete the picture of the different assets you would need in an on-chain diversified portfolio.”

Traditional finance firms have been rushing to tokenize "real world assets" (RWAs), with blockchain-based U.S. Treasuries emerging as the largest and most liquid market. As of 2023, global private credit assets under management reached about $2.1 trillion, a four-fold increase over a decade, according to Securitize.

Private credit tokens are less common, but they present a new avenue for on-chain assets, said Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo.

"Private credit is an area that's been exploding as of late, and we have been among the pioneers in this area of tokenization having already launched a top-tier private credit fund token with Hamilton Lane,” said Domingo in an interview. "Private credit with a higher yield is a good complement to treasuries especially in a scenario with interest rates coming down.”

Securitize is the tokenization partner for BlackRock and the digital transfer agent for the asset manager's BUIDL money market fund token. For Apollo, Securitize is utilizing its partnership with Wormhole, a developer platform that enables different blockchain networks to communicate, to offer a multichain approach from the outset.

Apollo has been involved in several tests of tokenized assets, including a proof of concept last year with JPMorgan, carried out under Project Guardian, a collaborative effort led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Moy, a veteran Web3 strategist who previously worked on JPMorgan's blockchain and led initiatives like Intraday Repo, expressed interest in pursuing further collaborations in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi).

"Tokenizing Apollo's products is just the beginning,” said Moy. "We're excited to collaborate with leading teams in the digital assets ecosystem to design modern treasury management, automatically rebalancing investment portfolios at scale, smart contract-driven collateral management, and in the future, potentially the enablement of secondary liquidity for alternative assets.”