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Aptos Labs collaborates with Microsoft, Brevan Howard and SK Telecom to build out institutional platform Aptos Ascend

Blockchain infrastructure developer Aptos Labs penned partnerships with major tech and finance firms to build out its Aptos Ascend.

Aptos Ascend is a digital asset management platform for financial institutions. The product will use Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, as well as Azure OpenAI Service, a large language model that can undergird generative AI applications. Aptos Ascend will also employ Brevan Howard's market investment expertise to guide financial institutions offering digital currency and asset management services to clients, as well as SK Telecom's web3 technology such as wallet-as-a-service functionalities, according to a release shared with The Block.

Aptos Labs also tapped Boston Consulting Group, a firm amassing $12.3 billion in global revenue in 2023, as its consulting partner. The institutional platform intends to spread decentralized finance to institutional capital via the Aptos network and globally augment tokenized asset liquidity among other endeavors, the release continues.

“Global institutions require superior levels of compliance, security, trust, and innovation to service customers, operate across borders, and adhere to regulations at every level,” said Aptos Labs co-founder and CEO Mo Shaikh in a statement. “In collaboration with SK Telecom, Brevan Howard and Microsoft, Aptos Ascend will provide the world’s financial institutions, banks and tech-forward money markets with a performant, compliant, secure and scalable gateway to decentralized finance on Aptos that will evolve for years to come."

Aptos Labs also collaborated with Microsoft in August 2023 with the intent to further develop digital payments, tokenization and the intersection of AI and web3.

Aptos Labs founders

Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., Aptos Labs's co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Avery Ching served as a principal software engineer for Meta Novi, a digital wallet platform that has since shut down. Shaikh also worked for Novi's strategic partnerships at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The firm's native token APT traded hands at $9.19 at 5 p.m. ET on April 17 after seeing a 1.14% 24-hour increase, according to The Block's price page for APT. It's the 26th highest-ranked cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $3.9 billion.