SBI Holdings plans to take about a 20% stake in Indonesia’s Ajaib Group for $270 million by the end of August, aiming to expand circulation of its yen stablecoin JPYSC in Southeast Asia and help build blockchain-based cross-border settlement infrastructure that could support stablecoin payments and tokenized-asset trading. The transaction is Indonesia’s largest tech fundraising in years and gives the Japanese financial group a foothold in one of ASEAN’s largest retail investment markets, with more than 20 million retail investors and an estimated $375 billion consumer retail market, at a time when Indonesian startups raised just $340 million last year, down from $440 million in 2024 and far below $9.44 billion in 2021. Ajaib operates online brokerage, foreign-exchange margin trading, cryptocurrency and asset management businesses; earlier reporting put its retail user base above 3 million, valued the roughly ¥43 billion stake deal at an implied $1.35 billion and said Ajaib would become an equity-method affiliate after prior funding of about $245 million. SBI Chairman and President Yoshitaka Kitao said global digital-asset infrastructure is more important than ever in the tokenization era. The move follows SBI’s about $100 million July acquisition of Singapore crypto exchange Coinhako and its investment in Singapore digital securities platform DigiFT, with which it also formed a joint venture, as Japan has outlined plans for blockchain infrastructure for stocks and government bonds that could support 24/7 on-chain settlement in the early 2030s.