SBI Holdings and the Solana Foundation announced a strategic collaboration on July 13 to build what they called an on-chain financial market originating from Japan, according to a joint statement filed by SBI Holdings.
As part of the deal, SBI R3 Japan, an existing subsidiary jointly owned by SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), will take on the working name SBI Solana Global and pursue what the companies described as a new growth strategy, with the Solana Foundation acquiring an equity stake in the company alongside its existing shareholders.
SBI Solana Global plans to build its business around deployment on the Solana network, supporting the issuance and distribution of stablecoins including JPYSC, the yen-denominated stablecoin SBI launched last month; the structuring and distribution of tokenized real-world assets such as corporate bonds, commercial paper, funds and real estate; cross-border settlement infrastructure; on-chain financial services for institutional investors; and payment infrastructure built for the AI-agent era.
The companies said Japan’s deep pools of financial assets and advanced legal framework for digital assets make it a starting point to connect Solana’s network to markets across Asia and globally.
The tie-up extends a run of digital asset dealmaking SBI has pursued in rapid succession this year. The conglomerate acquired Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for close to $289 million in June, became the sole investor in risk-management firm Gauntlet’s $125 million Series C, and led EDX Markets’ $76 million Series C the week prior. Layered together, the moves point to SBI positioning itself across multiple layers of digital market infrastructure at once: exchange access through Bitbank, institutional trading through EDX, risk tooling through Gauntlet, and now a dedicated vehicle for stablecoin issuance and real-world asset tokenization through SBI Solana Global.
The Solana Foundation confirmed the partnership in a post on X, describing SMFG as a globally systemically important bank and framing the deal as bringing “RWA and stablecoin markets from Japan to the world.” Neither party disclosed the size of the Solana Foundation’s stake in SBI Solana Global or a timeline for when the venture’s products will go live.
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