Apollo Global Management is moving to deepen its involvement in decentralized finance through a long-term collaboration with the Morpho Association.

The partnership was announced on Feb. 13, with the Morpho Association confirming that it had signed an agreement with Apollo affiliates.

Over the next 48 months, Apollo and its related entities will have the option to acquire up to 90 million Morpho (MORPHO) tokens.

Agreement outlines token purchase plan

These tokens may be obtained through a mix of open-market purchases, over-the-counter transactions, and other negotiated arrangements. To promote market stability, the agreement includes ownership caps as well as specific transfer and trading restrictions.

These safeguards were built into the structure of the deal to limit sudden supply increases and reduce the likelihood of sharp price swings.

If the full allocation is purchased, Apollo’s holdings would represent about 9% of Morpho’s total governance token supply.. At recent prices ranging between $1.19 and $1.37 per token in mid-February, the full cap would be valued at approximately $107 million to $115 million.

Galaxy Digital UK Limited acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Morpho during the negotiations. Morpho said the cooperation will support the development of lending markets, credit infrastructure, and curator-managed vaults across its protocol.

Agreement outlines token purchase plan

The Apollo deal follows several high-profile institutional partnerships that have helped Morpho strengthen its position in decentralized lending.

In late January 2026, Bitwise Asset Management introduced its first on-chain vault on Morpho, offering USDC deposits with yields of up to 6%. The launch marked Bitwise’s first move into non-custodial DeFi yield strategies.

Shortly after, in early February 2026, Morpho expanded its platform by integrating with the Flare blockchain. This integration made it possible for users to lend and borrow XRP-linked assets, such as FXRP. The rollout included vaults backed by FXRP, FLR, and USDT0, all accessible through the Mystic app.

Coinbase made major strides in 2025 when it integrated Morpho’s infrastructure to support its crypto-backed lending services. The integration supported over $960 million in active loans, $1.7 billion in collateral, primarily backed by Ethereum and Bitcoin, and over $450 million in USDC earning yield. 

Morpho has been also able to reach a wider audience by offering lending, borrowing, and yield products to both individual and institutional customers through other partnerships with Bitget, Société Générale Forge, Gemini, and Crypto.com.

Ongoing protocol improvements have enabled this expansion. Morpho Vaults 1.1, which was released in 2025, improved risk management. In the meantime, the development of Morpho V2 is one of the main objectives for 2026. Future iterations will include fixed-rate and fixed-term loans with decentralized risk controls. 

Market observers see the Apollo deal as evidence of growing institutional confidence in on-chain credit markets. Partnerships such as these are becoming more common as traditional asset managers look for more direct access to blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

Stani Kulechov, the founder of decentralized lending platform Aave, said DeFi could benefit from $50 trillion worth of “abundance assets” such as solar through tokenization by 2050, opening a new class of onchain collateral.

Data from RWA.xyz shows that nearly $25 billion worth of real-world assets have been tokenized onchain, but they are mostly in the form of US Treasury bonds, stocks, commodities, private credit and real estate.

In a post to X on Sunday, Kulechov said he expects these scarce assets to continue growing but that the “biggest impact from tokenization can be achieved by tokenizing abundance assets.”

“Capital is hungry for new collateral, and the world is ready for a transformation that onchain lending can capture and accelerate,” the Aave Labs boss said, while adding that solar could account for $15-$30 trillion of the $50 trillion “abundance asset” market by 2050.

Kulechov said solar debt financiers could tokenize a $100 million solar project while borrowing $70 million to redeploy into new projects, while onchain depositors would have “access to enormously scalable, low-risk yield that is well diversified.”

“An investor might buy tokenized solar, hold for three years, sell at a profit, and immediately redeploy into new development,” Kulechov added, arguing that such a model could significantly increase capital efficiency.

“Traditional infrastructure capital locks up for decades. Tokenized assets allow continuous trading, meaning the same dollar can finance multiple projects over time.”

Kulechov said the same idea extends to batteries for energy storage, robotics for labor, vertical farming and lab-grown food for nutrition, semiconductors for computation and 3D printing for materials.

Abundance assets could offer better returns

Kulechov said these abundance assets could offer higher returns than scarce assets, which he said are heading down “a road toward low, thin margins and diminished profitability.”

“Abundance-backed products offer better returns, better risk characteristics, and better values alignment. They win in the market because they are superior products.”

Aave is the largest DeFi protocol by total value locked, at $27 billion for borrowing and lending, DeFiLlama data shows.

The Tether-issued USDt (USDT) stablecoin, Ether (ETH) and wrapped Ether (wETH) are the most lent and borrowed assets on the platform.