Blockchain Powers Jack Ma’s $8-B Ant Group Energy Asset Strategy

According to Bloomberg, Ant Digital Technologies has linked more than 60 billion yuan (about $8.5 billion) of energy infrastructure to its AntChain blockchain platform, in what reports call a major push to turn physical power assets into tradable digital records.

The move ties generators and charging equipment to a blockchain so their output and outages can be recorded in a way that can’t be changed.

Scale And Scope Of The Blockchain Project

Ant’s system already connects about 15 million devices, including wind turbines and solar panels. More than 9,000 charging units are on the ledger as well.

Based on the report, the company has also tied the work to Ant’s Whale blockchain, which handles a share of the more than $1 trillion that Ant’s global payments network processed last year. The scale puts this effort well beyond many pilot programs elsewhere.

Ant Has Backed Tokens With Real Assets

The project does more than log data. Tokens have been issued against some of the linked assets, and those tokens were used to raise money.

Financing of roughly 300 million yuan (about $42 million) has been arranged for three clean energy projects under the new setup.

In earlier deals, Ant helped Longshine Technology Group raise 100 million yuan, and later arranged over 200 million yuan by connecting photovoltaic assets to the chain for GCL Energy Technology.

Reports explain that these tokens represent slices of ownership or revenue streams from the projects. By offering tokens directly, operators can tap investors without going through traditional loan officers or underwriters.

That can speed up capital flows for project developers. Executives are also weighing whether to let the tokens be traded on offshore exchanges to create more liquidity, but those plans hinge on regulators granting permission.

The initiative joins a broader trend of putting real-world assets on blockchains. Companies like Securitize have worked on equities and bonds, while other teams focus on tokenized Treasuries and fractional property ownership.

Ant’s focus on energy adds a large, infrastructure-heavy example to the list. The technology could make it easier for smaller investors to own a piece of projects that were once accessible only to big institutions.

Featured image from Meta, chart from TradingView