Aptos Labs, the developers behind the Aptos layer-1 blockchain, said it is collaborating with Microsoft, Brevan Howard and South Korean wireless telecommunications operator SK Telecom to offer institutions a gateway into decentralized finance.

The partnership will offer Aptos Ascend, a suite of end-to-end institutional solutions like regulatory requirement help, tools to maintain account and transaction privacy and embedded features for know-your-customer (KYC) checks.

This comes as a number of layer 1s attempt to bridge the gap between DeFi and large institutions. Avalanche, NEAR and others have all announced enterprise collaborations in an attempt to ramp this up.

Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI services will be used for the financial suite offering, according to a press release.

Brevan Howard’s involvement will include tapping into its industry leadership and expertise to develop potential opportunities for institutions to offer digital assets management or offerings to their clients, the statement said. Boston Consulting Group will help implement the solutions.

“In collaboration with SKT, Brevan Howard and Microsoft, Aptos Ascend will provide the world’s financial institutions, banks, and tech-forward money markets with a performant, compliant, secure, and scalable gateway to decentralized finance on Aptos that will evolve for years to come,” said Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs.

The company said in August that Aptos is leveraging Microsoft's infrastructure to deploy new offerings that combine AI and blockchain technology, including a new chatbot called Aptos Assistant.

Aptos Labs was founded by former Meta employees.