RWA Insights with Partners Group and Asseto

Jake and TN from Pendle spoke with Vincent Ng, Managing Director and Head of Asia at Partners Group, and Bridget Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Asseto, on bringing…

2026-10-07

With Vincent Ng (Partners Group) and Bridget Li (Asseto)

Watch on YouTube

Jake and TN from Pendle spoke with Vincent Ng, Managing Director and Head of Asia at Partners Group, and Bridget Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Asseto, on bringing Partners Group’s infrastructure strategy onchain as NGI+, what makes a tokenized asset useful, and where tokenized private markets go next.

Disclaimer: Nothing said by Pendle, its participants, hosts or guests is financial, investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell anything. No liability is accepted for reliance on this content. By continuing, you acknowledge and agree to this notice.

Summary

What was the catalyst for Partners Group to bring its infrastructure strategy onchain?

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

Partners Group manages $186B and has invested in infrastructure for over 20 years. It launched one of the first evergreen private markets funds 25 years ago and still runs four of the six that are more than a decade old
It first looked at tokenization 3 to 5 years ago and found the market too early. Work with Asseto picked up around the turn of 2026 as counterparties matured
RWA investors had been choosing between volatile venture bets with no cash flow and low-return fund products, with little in between
Family office clients holding crypto had asked to invest onchain, and NGI+ gives them that route. Growth will be gradual by design

What is Asseto’s role, and what are the main benefits of tokenization?

Bridget Li (Asseto)

Asseto has tokenized $500M. Its role is to make institutional assets usable onchain, meaning principal can be split from yield, the asset works as collateral, and other protocols can build on it
Much of what has been tokenized so far is “a prettier PDF, or even a more expensive PDF” (Bridget Li). Asseto wants every dollar it has tokenized integrated with DeFi this year, starting with NGI+
Most issuers are still at the tokenization stage, and the asset class needs utility to scale (TN)

What draws traditional finance institutions to tokenization?

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

Partners Group’s clients are insurers, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and large family offices
Many family offices now hold crypto assets and have asked to invest with Partners Group onchain, beyond private bank platforms
The vault Asseto built gives them that access point, and opens private markets to investors who have never held them
Both sides benefit, but growth will be gradual and sustainable rather than overnight

RWAs coming onchain looks inevitable. How do you see the market as a whole?

Bridget Li (Asseto)

The picture looks rosy, but getting there is difficult
Billions in assets have been tokenized, but much of it is “a prettier PDF, or even a more expensive PDF”, represented onchain without being used
Asseto treats its $500M tokenized to date as history, and this year’s goal is to integrate every dollar it has tokenized with DeFi, starting with NGI+
Onchain liquidity for RWAs, including on Pendle, still has plenty of room to grow, and much of the groundwork is still being done

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

The opportunity is clear and the trajectory points upward, but progress comes one step at a time
Partners Group and Asseto work through liquidity and structuring issues every other week
Done gradually, by the right stakeholders with the right intentions, the potential is significant

Why is Pendle well positioned for the RWA wave?

TN (Pendle)

RWAs coming onchain is inevitable, but most issuers are still focused on tokenization, and the asset class needs utility to scale
Pendle pioneered and popularized splitting yield-bearing assets into principal and yield, with years of track record on assets yielding anywhere from 4% to 25%
Users who want a fixed rate can lock one in, and users who want exposure to future yield can take the other side, a model crypto-native users now know well
The same model applies to yield-bearing RWAs, so NGI+’s yield can be split and traded the same way
Fixed-rate positions have been used as collateral on Aave, Morpho and Euler, enabling looping and deeper liquidity
That level of composability is rare outside crypto and opens up uses RWAs don’t have offchain

What backs NGI+?

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

At its base, NGI+ is long-term, stable infrastructure
It combines direct control investments, where Partners Group drives value creation, with secondary stakes in other investors’ portfolios and seasoned single assets, which add diversification and liquidity
The portfolio holds 26 direct investments and 48 secondary transactions, covering more than 500 underlying assets
Around 45 to 47% sits in North America, 40 to 43% in Europe and the rest in Asia and other markets
Sectors span data centers and digital infrastructure, energy transition (grid-scale battery storage, wind and solar), and transport, social and new living infrastructure
NGI stands at $2.4B and is on course for $3B by year-end, with a diversified base of institutional and private wealth investors

NGI has returned close to 20% net annualized since February 2024 with volatility below 2.5%, against a 10 to 12% target. What is driving those numbers?

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

Past performance does not necessarily guarantee future returns
NGI has returned 19.2% annualized since its 2024 inception, 17.4% in 2025 and 8.4% net year to date, though these levels are not expected to be fully sustainable over the long term
The mid-market focus is a key factor, since large-cap infrastructure carries more debt and is more exposed to higher-for-longer rates and competition
Mid-market deals are less contested and leave room to sell assets to large-cap funds and strategic buyers at exit
Thematic research runs on 10 to 20 year cycles across three umbrella themes, nine thematics and 99 sub-themes, looking at which sectors AI will support and which it will disrupt
With data center valuations high in the US and Europe, Partners Group is cautious there and probably a net seller, preferring smaller brownfield platforms it can buy at reasonable prices and build up, such as one in Malaysia and Singapore
A global investment committee weighs every deal on relative value, so capital is never forced into one region

Why does NGI+ make sense for onchain investors, and what was hard to explain?

Bridget Li (Asseto)

500 assets in a single fund is a scale and depth onchain allocators can’t reach on their own
Asseto brought the NGI+ idea to Partners Group after spotting a gap in the onchain market
“DeFi has never had a shortage of yield. What it has had a shortage of is yield that is backed by diversified real economic activity and designed to behave in a stable way across market cycles”
Diversification across projects, geographies and sectors is central to how the strategy controls risk, unlike many DeFi yield products that rest on a single project
Crypto-native investors tend to assume private infrastructure means money locked up forever or a pure AI data center trade, and neither is accurate
“DeFi is very good at making risk visible every second. NGI+ is about managing risk before it becomes visible”
Since the Pendle market launched, DeFi investors have approached Asseto on a reverse-inquiry basis, including a liquid fund

What made Pendle the right fit for NGI+?

Bridget Li (Asseto)

Separating principal from yield is familiar from over 15 years in fixed income, where the first lesson on the desk was the par-par asset swap
In TradFi, that kind of structure is only available to clients of major dealers, and it doesn’t come cheap
Pendle turns it into an open market with participants on both sides and no intermediary needed to underwrite or broker either leg, which widens the range of assets that can be split
NGI+ offers the stable yield Pendle users are used to, plus a genuine yield view to trade, since returns vary month to month unlike a money market fund

TN (Pendle)

NGI+ is one of the first non-crypto-native assets on Pendle, so education will take time
Community response has been positive, with questions on the product’s longer-term plans and how to price its yield

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

Education is standard practice with Partners Group’s institutional and private wealth clients, so every investor understands a product before committing capital

What’s next for Partners Group and Asseto?

Vincent Ng (Partners Group)

Partners Group invests across private equity, infrastructure, real estate, private credit and royalties
Infrastructure made a natural first product because everyone uses it, from roads and airports to data centers
Royalties, the firm’s newest asset class, has been identified as a good fit for the next onchain product
The strategy started in the founders’ family office around seven years ago and became Partners Group’s fifth asset class after outgrowing it
It holds more than 10,000 IP assets across music, media, brands, healthcare and energy, including a large share of Warner Bros. global TV and music rights, and has grown past $2B
Returns have low correlation to crypto, interest rates and GDP, since people don’t stream less music or need less medicine when money is tight
Demand is strong enough that inflows may need to be capped

Bridget Li (Asseto)

NGI+ remains Asseto’s flagship product and immediate focus
The industry needs fewer tokenization announcements and more tokenized products people actually use
Asseto plans to tokenize the royalties fund and integrate it with Pendle

Quickfire Round — Agree/Disagree

By 2030, more than half of Partners Group’s infrastructure funds will have an onchain tokenized layer?

Vincent would probably disagree given the firm’s size, though he’d be “shocked, but also very pleased”.

Within two years, traditional finance institutions will be the largest buyers of Pendle PTs, locking in fixed yield?

TN agrees 😉

About Partners Group

Partners Group is a global private markets firm with $186B in assets under management, investing across private equity, infrastructure, real estate, private credit and royalties. It has invested in infrastructure for over 20 years and pioneered the evergreen fund structure 25 years ago. NGI+ is backed by its Next Generation Infrastructure strategy.

About Asseto

Asseto is a tokenization platform with operations in Hong Kong and Singapore and $500M in tokenized assets. It brings institutional assets onchain and builds the structures that let them be used in DeFi, including the NGI+ market on Pendle.