Investment signals a growing demand for DeFi exposure among sophisticated investors, as Payward and Aave explore opportunities to collaborate on future initiatives

Payward, the unified financial infrastructure platform that powers Kraken, today announced that Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP, a Payward-affiliated investment fund, and its clients acquired an undisclosed amount of AAVE, the native token of the Aave network. The AAVE tokens were acquired through secondary market purchases, and Payward may make additional acquisitions in the future.

This investment marks a milestone for Payward Asset Management, one of the company’s five key pillars, which connects investors with opportunities across digital assets, structured yield and tokenized financial instruments. As traditional and onchain markets converge, Payward believes DeFi is an integral part of the global financial system, with Aave playing a leading role in this evolution. Payward’s strong relationship with Aave enabled the company to pursue this joint investment for Payward’s clients seeking exposure to the fast-growing DeFi sector.

Aave is the largest onchain lending network, enabling users to lend and borrow digital assets. Its native AAVE token plays a leading role in the ecosystem, giving holders governance rights over the network and its treasury. Under the Aave Will Win framework approved earlier this year, Aave Labs has committed to directing revenue from Aave-branded products to the Aave DAO treasury, alongside the network fees it already receives. This token-centric model more closely aligns the growth of Aave's ecosystem with the interests of its tokenholder-governed community.

“Onchain lending is quickly becoming an important part of the financial system, and Aave has established itself as one of the foundational protocols powering that shift,” said Gurpreet Oberoi, Vice President, Payward Asset Management and Institutional. “This investment reflects our long-term conviction in onchain credit markets and DeFi, as well as growing demand from our clients for exposure to the infrastructure shaping the future of finance.”

Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO at Aave Labs, said: “Payward’s investment shows growing confidence in AAVE and in the Aave Will Win framework, which commits Aave Labs to growing the ecosystem and directing value back to the DAO and AAVE holders. Working with Payward is a strategic step toward bringing Aave to the next wave of retail and institutional users.”

About Payward

Payward, Inc. is a unified financial infrastructure platform that powers a family of products advancing an open, global financial system. Built on a single shared architecture, Payward enables customers to hold, trade, earn, pay, and invest across asset classes without friction or fragmentation.

At its core, Payward provides the infrastructure layer behind Kraken and a growing set of purpose-built products, including NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and CF Benchmarks.

Payward separates infrastructure from product expression. Each product surface is designed for a specific customer segment, regulatory regime, and use case, while operating on the same global foundation:

One global liquidity pool
One unified risk and margin engine
One collateral and settlement system
One compliance and licensing framework

This shared architecture allows Payward to scale efficiently, launch new products at low marginal cost, and serve diverse global markets while maintaining consistent risk management, regulatory integrity, and operational resilience.

For more information about Payward, please visit www.payward.com.

About Aave Labs

Aave Labs is a core contributor in the Aave network and builds products that make saving, lending and borrowing simple and accessible worldwide.

Aave Labs’ products include Aave App, a savings app for everyone; Aave Pro, for advanced lending and borrowing; Aave Kit, which lets fintechs and businesses offer savings and loans to their users; and Aave Horizon, an institutional platform for borrowing stablecoins against tokenized real-world assets. For more information, visit aave.com.

About Aave

The Aave network is the world’s largest and most trusted onchain lending market, with $33 billion in net deposits and $11 billion in active loans. It operates as a global lending, borrowing, and savings network, where users can deposit crypto or stablecoins to earn and borrow instantly using their assets as collateral. Powered by transparent blockchain smart contracts – with no banks, no paperwork, and available 24/7 – the Aave network brings open, onchain finance to a global audience. For more information, visit aave.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261105199514/en/

Lauren Post
press@payward.com

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