Centrifuge tokenizes JAAA fund, featuring 36 CLOs with no defaults

Centrifuge has brought one of traditional finance’s safest asset classes onto the blockchain, tokenizing the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Fund across eight different networks. The fund now holds roughly $689.9 million in assets under management, spread across chains including Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche.

The portfolio contains 36 AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations, all managed by Janus Henderson. CLOs are bundles of corporate loans sliced into tranches by risk level. The AAA tranche sits at the very top of the stack, meaning it gets paid first and absorbs losses last. No AAA-rated CLO tranche has ever defaulted or suffered a principal loss in over 30 years.

How the fund came together

The tokenized JAAA fund launched in June 2025, seeded with a $1 billion investment from the Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO’s broader organization) through Grove. That kind of seed capital gave the fund immediate scale in a tokenized asset market where most products struggle to break past the tens-of-millions mark.

The structure involves three key players. Janus Henderson serves as sub-advisor, bringing its portfolio management expertise and decades of CLO experience. Anemoy acts as the fund vehicle. Centrifuge provides the tokenization technology and on-chain infrastructure that makes the whole thing work.

On the traditional finance side, Janus Henderson’s offchain JAAA ETF already manages assets in the tens of billions, making it one of the largest CLO funds in existence. Tokenizing a version of that product takes something that institutional investors already trust and makes it composable with DeFi protocols.

The tokenized fund can be used as collateral on decentralized finance platforms like Aave Horizon, which means holders don’t have to choose between earning yield on AAA CLOs and participating in DeFi lending markets. The subscription and redemption process uses stablecoins, which eliminates the friction of moving between fiat and crypto.

Why AAA CLOs are the perfect tokenization candidate

The appeal of AAA-rated CLO tranches comes down to one remarkable statistic: zero defaults in over three decades. That includes the Global Financial Crisis, when most structured credit products were getting demolished, and the COVID-19 pandemic, when credit markets briefly seized up.

CLOs hold diversified portfolios of senior secured corporate loans, and the AAA tranche benefits from significant subordination. That track record makes the product attractive to institutional allocators who want on-chain exposure but aren’t willing to stomach the volatility of native crypto assets.

The bigger picture for tokenized real-world assets

Successfully tokenizing a product with 36 underlying CLO positions across multiple blockchains demonstrates that the infrastructure can handle genuinely sophisticated financial instruments, not just straightforward government bonds.

A traditional JAAA ETF holder can’t post their shares as collateral on Aave. A tokenized JAAA holder can.

For Janus Henderson, the partnership represents a low-risk way to explore blockchain distribution. The firm already manages the underlying strategy at massive scale, so the tokenized version doesn’t require building new investment capabilities. It’s the same product with a different delivery mechanism.

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