Aave Horizon to onboard Neuberger Berman's $230B high-yield fund as collateral

Aave Horizon's proposal to accept a $230 billion high-yield fund as collateral would bring below-investment-grade credit onchain for the first time.

Aave Horizon is set to accept a $230 billion Neuberger Berman high-yield fund as supply-only collateral under a governance proposal announced Tuesday.

"This follows our strategy of partnering with the best at what they do," Carlos Domingo, chief executive officer and founder of Securitize, said in announcing the fund's launch across four blockchains.

The Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund, known as HINC, invests primarily in high-yield corporate bonds, with additional exposure to collateralized loan obligations and leveraged loans. It requires a minimum investment of $100,000 and is restricted to accredited investors and qualified purchasers. If the Aave proposal passes, HINC holders on Ethereum could borrow stablecoins including USDC, GHO, and RLUSD against their positions. Securitize, which manages roughly $4.96 billion in distributed tokenized asset value across 26 products, according to RWA.xyz data, provides the tokenization infrastructure, while Neuberger Berman serves as subadvisor in its first tokenized fund role.

The onboarding would mark Aave Horizon's first below-investment-grade credit asset, moving the institutional lending platform beyond the treasuries and money-market instruments that have dominated tokenized funds to date. Aave Horizon, built on Ethereum, already holds hundreds of millions in market size, and adding a high-yield credit fund could draw fresh institutional capital into the protocol's stablecoin borrowing markets.

HINC is structured to operate across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, giving institutional participants flexibility in choosing their blockchain infrastructure. The supply-only designation means the fund can be deposited to earn yield or posted as collateral for borrowing, but cannot itself be borrowed by other users — a guardrail that limits leverage and rehypothecation for a fund investing in below-investment-grade instruments.

Securitize Capital registered as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July, and the company reported first-quarter revenue of $19.5 million, up about 40 percent from a year earlier. Its portfolio includes BlackRock's $2.7 billion BUIDL fund, a $355 million tokenized AAA collateralized loan obligation fund, and a $95 million Apollo diversified credit fund. Securitize shares rose 5.93 percent to $5.71 on Tuesday following the announcement, though the stock remains more than 50 percent below levels reached after its New York Stock Exchange debut on July 2.

Neuberger Berman's fixed-income platform manages more than $230 billion in assets, part of a larger group overseeing approximately $567 billion as of March 2026. The launch adds another data point to the expanding tokenized fund market, pairing an established asset manager with multi-chain distribution infrastructure as tokenized real-world assets are expected to grow substantially by 2030.

The Aave governance vote will determine whether HINC becomes the first high-yield credit asset on Aave Horizon. A successful proposal would give institutional users a new onchain route to below-investment-grade fixed income, while expanding the range of real-world assets that can back stablecoin borrowing on the protocol.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.