Europe's largest asset manager entered the tokenized fund market on March 17, 2026, and within three weeks the product had attracted $400 million in assets under management. The Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund (SAFO) — a French-regulated UCITS vehicle with its shareholder register on Ethereum an...
"SAFO provides professional investors with fast and transparent access to cash management solutions. This initiative is part of our ambition to contribute to the rise of tokenized solutions." — Jean-Jacques Barbéris, Head of Institutional & Corporate Clients, Amundi
Europe's largest asset manager entered the tokenized fund market on March 17, 2026, and within three weeks the product had attracted $400 million in assets under management. The Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund (SAFO) — a French-regulated UCITS vehicle with its shareholder register on Ethereum and Stellar — represents the fastest AUM ramp in the history of tokenized funds, according to data compiled by Spiko and Chainlink.
The launch marks an inflection point for European tokenized finance. SAFO's UCITS wrapper gives it passporting rights across the entire European Union, a structural advantage that U.S.-domiciled competitors like BlackRock's BUIDL and Ondo Finance's OUSG do not possess. Spiko, the Paris-based tokenization platform behind the fund, crossed $1 billion in total AUM in February 2026, 18 months after its first fund went live — making it the only European issuer among the top five tokenized fund providers globally.
The fund's mechanics differ from the treasury-backed model that dominates U.S. tokenized products. SAFO uses fully collateralized total return swaps with G-SIB counterparties — BNP Paribas as the first — to generate yields above risk-free benchmarks while maintaining overnight liquidity. The approach introduces bank credit risk but eliminates direct sovereign exposure, a trade-off that corporate treasury managers appear willing to accept in exchange for multi-currency flexibility and 24/7 settlement.
SAFO is a sub-fund of SPIKO SICAV, a société d'investissement à capital variable regulated under French law and supervised by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). The fund is managed by Twenty First Capital, an AMF-authorized management company, with Amundi serving as delegated investment manager. CACEIS acts as depositary bank and fund administrator. Spiko operates as transfer agent, tokenization platform, and broker.
The fund's investment strategy is built on fully collateralized total return swaps rather than direct holdings of government securities. Under this structure, a G-SIB counterparty — currently BNP Paribas — posts U.S. equities as collateral and pays agreed rates above risk-free benchmarks in exchange for the fund's investment returns. Fourteen globally systemically important banks are approved as eligible counterparties, including Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UBS, and HSBC.
SAFO accepts subscriptions in four currencies: EUR, USD, GBP, and CHF. The minimum subscription is one unit in any supported currency. Settlement occurs on-chain with near-instant finality. The shareholder register is maintained on both Ethereum and Stellar, with plans to expand to additional networks. Access is available programmatically via API or smart contracts, targeting institutional and corporate treasury use cases.
The fund launched on March 17, 2026, with $100 million in committed AUM. It reached $400 million within three weeks of launch.
Spiko was founded in 2023 by Paul-Adrien Hyppolite and Antoine Michon, former senior civil servants from France's ENS and Corps des Mines, both with backgrounds in financial regulation and digital transformation. The company obtained AMF licensing through its partnership with Twenty First Capital and ACPR authorization as an investment firm.
In mid-2024, Spiko launched what it described as Europe's first approved tokenized money market funds on a public blockchain. The platform crossed $1.03 billion in total AUM in February 2026, according to Spiko's own disclosure. The breakdown as of that milestone:
| Fund | AUM | Users | |------|-----|-------| | Spiko Euro | €639.4M | 2,949 | | Spiko Dollar | $218.9M | 918 | | Spiko Pound | £6.2M | 245 | | Spiko Cash & Carry | $43.3M | 137 |
Total active clients exceeded 3,300. Cumulative transaction volume reached $2.85 billion across more than 26,600 transactions. Total interest distributed to clients: $13.2 million, of which $12.0 million went to B2B clients and $1.2 million to retail users.
The client composition shifted significantly over the platform's life. B2B users overtook B2C users by mid-2025 and now account for over 92% of total AUM. France represents $888.4 million, or 86%, of total assets, with the remainder distributed across more than 20 countries.
Key institutional validation came in April 2025 when Bpifrance, the French state investment bank, announced a subscription to Spiko's Euro money market fund using its own cash reserves — a notable endorsement from a sovereign-backed institution.
Spiko raised $22 million in Series A funding in July 2025, led by Index Ventures, with participation from White Star Capital, Frst, Rerail, Blockwall, and Bpifrance's Digital Venture Fund.
The tokenized fund sector had $27.6 billion in total RWA tokenization as of April 2026, according to rwa.xyz data. Within the narrower category of tokenized money market and treasury funds, the competitive hierarchy as of February 2026 stood as follows:
| Issuer | Product | AUM | Chains | |--------|---------|-----|--------| | BlackRock / Securitize | BUIDL | $2.18B | 9 chains | | Circle (Hashnote) | USYC | $1.62B | Multiple | | Spiko | Multiple funds | $1.03B | Ethereum, Stellar | | Franklin Templeton | BENJI | $897M | Stellar, Polygon | | Ondo Finance | OUSG | $779M | Ethereum, others | | Superstate | Multiple | $731M | Ethereum |
Spiko is the only European issuer among the top six. Its month-over-month growth rate exceeded 20% at the time of the $1 billion milestone, faster than any competitor in the cohort.
SAFO introduces a structural differentiator: the swap-based model. While BUIDL, BENJI, and OUSG hold U.S. Treasury bills directly and distribute yield from sovereign coupons, SAFO generates returns through bank counterparty swaps. This gives SAFO multi-currency capability without requiring separate sovereign bond pools for each currency — a EUR investor gets EUR-denominated returns from the same fund structure as a USD investor.
The trade-off is credit risk. SAFO's returns depend on G-SIB counterparty solvency rather than U.S. government creditworthiness. The fund mitigates this through collateralization requirements and counterparty diversification across 14 approved banks.
SAFO's most significant structural advantage may be regulatory. As a UCITS-compliant fund, it can be distributed across all 27 EU member states plus the EEA without requiring additional regulatory approval in each jurisdiction. No U.S.-domiciled tokenized fund currently holds this passport.
The UCITS framework imposes constraints — diversification requirements, eligible asset rules, liquidity mandates — but in exchange provides a distribution footprint that covers a $23 trillion collective investment market, according to EFAMA data. For institutional investors subject to UCITS-only mandates, SAFO is accessible where BUIDL and OUSG are not.
France's regulatory environment has been particularly accommodating for DLT-based fund issuance. The AMF recognizes blockchain-based shareholder registers as equivalent to traditional book-entry systems, and CACEIS — the depositary — has processed tokenized UCITS subscriptions on public blockchains since October 2024. This infrastructure maturity enabled SAFO's rapid launch.
The timing aligns with broader European regulatory developments. MiCA's full enforcement deadline approaches in July 2026, and the EU's DLT Pilot Regime has established a framework for blockchain-based settlement of financial instruments. Tokenized UCITS funds like SAFO sit at the intersection of existing securities regulation and emerging DLT frameworks — regulated enough for institutional adoption, on-chain enough for 24/7 composability.
SAFO's on-chain infrastructure relies on three primary components:
Chainlink provides the NAV oracle, automating net asset value reporting on-chain. This eliminates the manual T+1 NAV publication cycle typical of traditional funds, enabling real-time pricing for subscription and redemption. Chainlink's cross-chain infrastructure also supports potential future expansion to additional networks without requiring the fund to redeploy on each chain.
CACEIS, a joint venture of Crédit Agricole and Santander, serves as depositary and fund administrator. CACEIS has been processing tokenized fund operations on public blockchains since 2024, giving it operational experience that most traditional fund administrators lack. The firm administered Amundi's earlier tokenization of a Cash EUR fund share class in late 2025.
Ethereum and Stellar host the dual shareholder register. Ethereum provides access to the DeFi composability layer — critical for collateral use cases where SAFO tokens might serve as margin or lending collateral. Stellar offers lower transaction costs and faster finality for high-frequency settlement. Spiko has indicated plans to expand to additional networks.
The infrastructure choice reflects a pragmatic approach to multi-chain deployment. Rather than committing to a single network, the fund operates across two chains with different cost-performance profiles, using Chainlink as a cross-chain abstraction layer.
Several risks warrant consideration:
Counterparty concentration. Despite 14 approved G-SIBs, SAFO's swap-based model introduces bank credit risk that treasury-backed products avoid. A G-SIB default or credit event could impair fund returns, though collateralization requirements provide a buffer.
Geographic concentration. Spiko's AUM is 86% French-domiciled. The UCITS passport provides theoretical pan-European distribution, but actual adoption remains concentrated. Cross-border institutional demand for SAFO is unproven.
Regulatory uncertainty. While UCITS provides a well-understood framework, the interaction between UCITS rules, MiCA requirements, and DLT Pilot Regime provisions creates regulatory overlap that has not been fully tested in enforcement scenarios.
Smart contract risk. The on-chain shareholder register, NAV oracle, and settlement infrastructure introduce technical risk vectors absent from traditional fund structures. A smart contract exploit could affect record-keeping integrity, though the UCITS depositary structure provides an off-chain fallback.
Yield compression. With risk-free rates across major currencies potentially declining, the yield premium that SAFO offers over traditional bank deposits may narrow, reducing the incentive for corporate treasurers to adopt a more complex on-chain product.
The Amundi-Spiko SAFO launch represents European asset management's most substantive entry into tokenized finance. The $400 million three-week ramp is notable not for its absolute size — BlackRock's BUIDL manages four times that figure — but for what it demonstrates about institutional demand for regulated, on-chain fund products within the EU's established UCITS framework.
The competitive dynamics in tokenized funds are shifting from a U.S.-dominated market to a two-continent race. SAFO's UCITS passport, multi-currency capability, and swap-based yield generation create a differentiated product profile that complements rather than directly competes with treasury-backed U.S. products. For European institutional allocators constrained by UCITS mandates, SAFO fills a product gap that did not previously exist on-chain.
Whether SAFO's rapid growth is sustainable depends on factors largely outside the fund's control: the interest rate trajectory across EUR and USD, the pace of institutional on-chain treasury adoption, and the regulatory clarity that MiCA's full enforcement brings. The product's first quarter of AUM data, expected by mid-June 2026, will provide the first meaningful test of retention and organic growth beyond initial commitments.