Apollo is making a deeper move into DeFi—and this time it’s through Morpho.
The traditional finance heavyweight has signed a cooperation agreement with the decentralized lending platform, with plans to acquire up to 90 million $MORPHO tokens over the next four years. That would represent roughly 9% of the protocol’s total supply, signaling a long-term strategic bet rather than a short-term trade.
Beyond the token purchase, the two sides say they’ll work together to support onchain lending markets built on Morpho’s infrastructure. While the details are still light, the partnership points to growing institutional confidence in DeFi as a legitimate extension of traditional capital markets.
The market reacted quickly. MORPHO jumped nearly 18% over the weekend following the announcement, even though the token remains down over the past year amid broader market weakness.
Morpho currently ranks among the top #DeFi protocols by total value locked, and this deal adds to a string of recent partnerships, including collaborations with Bitwise and Bitcoin-focused DeFi projects.
For Apollo, it’s another step in a steady push into crypto—from stablecoin credit strategies with Coinbase to investments in tokenized real-world asset platforms.
The bigger picture: institutions aren’t just experimenting with crypto anymore—they’re starting to take meaningful positions inside DeFi protocols themselves.