TL;DR
- SBI Holdings plans to acquire a 20% stake in Indonesia’s Ajaib Group for $270 million before the end of August.
- The deal aims to expand JPYSC, the yen-denominated stablecoin, across Southeast Asia through blockchain infrastructure.
- The $270 million round is Indonesia’s largest technology funding in years, according to Bloomberg data.
SBI Holdings announced its intention to acquire a 20% stake in Ajaib Group, Indonesia’s leading online retail investment platform, for $270 million. The transaction, expected to close before the end of August, is part of the Japanese financial firm’s strategy to deploy cross-border settlement blockchain infrastructure across Southeast Asia.
The agreement is directly linked to the expansion of JPYSC, SBI’s yen-pegged stablecoin. The company seeks to distribute this digital asset in high-potential markets such as Indonesia, where the retail investment sector exceeds 20 million active users. According to IMARC Group data, the country’s retail consumer market amounts to roughly $375 billion, positioning it as one of the most significant in ASEAN.
Ajaib operates online brokerage services, margin trading in foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, and asset management within the Indonesian market. Its integration into SBI’s network gives the Japanese firm a strategic foothold in the region.
SBI Expands Across Southeast Asia
This is not the company’s first regional transaction. In July, SBI completed the acquisition of Coinhako Group, a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Singapore, for approximately $100 million. It also made an investment in DigiFT, a Singaporean digital securities platform, with which it established a joint venture. The company is building a regulated crypto and digital securities infrastructure network across multiple Southeast Asian jurisdictions.
“In this era of tokenization, the importance of global infrastructure for digital assets is greater than ever,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, president and chairman of SBI.
The Japanese government announced plans to develop blockchain infrastructure for equities and government bonds, with on-chain settlement running 24 hours a day and operations that could begin in the early 2030s.
