ASK Group, Eric Schmidt‑backed Keeta to Tokenize Gulf Commodities

UAE investment firm ASK Group and U.S. blockchain company Keeta plan to launch a public exchange by 2027 that will turn physical Gulf commodities into one-to-one fractional digital tokens available to investors worldwide.

The platform will convert reserves of oil, gold and copper into tokens each backed one-to-one by audited physical holdings. Trades are intended to settle in about 400 milliseconds and to show real-time, on-chain proof of reserves, allowing buyers to hold direct, fractional claims rather than exposure via futures or exchange-traded funds.

The partners said the exchange will also serve high-volume cross-border remittances that start in the UAE. The country is a major origination hub for money flows to India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Kenya; the UAE-India corridor alone moves roughly $20 billion a year. Keeta plans to use its Layer 1 blockchain to handle both the asset tokenization and faster payment rails for banks and remittance providers in the region.

Keeta’s network was stress-tested with engineers from Google’s Spanner team and has a verified throughput of 11.2 million transactions per second. The joint venture will use an “anchor model” in which licensed commercial banks, exchange houses and remittance firms connect to Keeta’s network through a single software development kit. Partners on the network will be able to execute cross-border transfers in under half a second and reduce reliance on some traditional correspondent banking steps.

Compliance features are integrated into Keeta’s protocol. The network includes built-in identity and regulatory layers that let asset issuers place transfer limits, jurisdictional controls and investor accreditation rules directly into tokens. Those controls are enforced automatically on later transactions, reducing the need for separate compliance intermediaries.

Under an exclusive agreement, ASK Group will manage and scale operations across the UAE, the broader Middle East and Africa region, and India. The rollout will start with a UAE blueprint before expanding tokenization models to other Gulf Cooperation Council markets. The partners expect the public exchange to be operational by 2027.

Keeta’s founder and chief executive, Ty Schenk, commented: “Together we are going to take assets and payment flows that have operated the same way for decades and put them on rails built for the next century.” Sheikh Ahmed bin Sultan bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of ASK Group described the venture as “a long‑term commitment to building the infrastructure that will define how trillions of dollars in real-world assets move.”

Keeta has backing from technology investors and public figures including Eric Schmidt. The project will provide tokenized claims tied to audited commodity reserves and offer regional financial institutions a unified integration to connect to faster cross-border payment rails.