Apollo Global Management has signed a cooperation agreement with decentralised lending platform Morpho Association to acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens and support blockchain-based lending infrastructure.
The agreement allows Apollo or its affiliates to buy up to 9% of MORPHO’s 1 billion token supply over four years, marking a significant step by the $940 billion asset manager into decentralised finance.
“Under the Agreement, Apollo or its affiliates may acquire MORPHO tokens through a combination of open-market purchases, OTC transactions, and other contractual arrangements, subject to an overall ownership cap of 90 million MORPHO tokens over a 48-month period as well as transfer and trading restrictions,”
Said the Morpho Association.
The association added that the parties will collaborate to support onchain lending markets built on Morpho’s protocol, although specific operational details were not disclosed.
The announcement triggered a 17.8% rise in MORPHO over the weekend, lifting the token from about $1.12 to $1.32, although it remains down 38% over the past year, and following the announcement the Morpho share price was unchanged at $1.32.
Morpho is currently the sixth-largest DeFi protocol by total value locked at $5.8 billion according to DeFi Llama, and focuses on lending markets and curated yield-generating vaults for investors.
The deal adds to a string of recent partnerships for Morpho, including collaborations with Bitwise and Coinbase, while Apollo has also expanded its crypto exposure through initiatives tied to stablecoin credit strategies and tokenised real-world assets.
At the time of reporting, Morpho price was $1.40.