Nasdaq and Citi have participated in a $20 million funding round for capital markets blockchain platform and technology provider, Symbiont.
The $20 million Series B funding round was led by Nasdaq Ventures, with other investors including Citigroup, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, and Raptor Group.
Symbiont said that the funds raised will be used to accelerate the deployment across its business divisions, such as data management, private equity and syndicated loans. Nasdaq will also seek new business opportunities to use Symbiont’s blockchain and smart contract platform, known as Assembly, with existing and new clients.
“Closing this round of funding enables us to accelerate investments in our platform and team,” Symbiont CEO and co-founder, Mark Smith, added. “Leveraging our financial markets and blockchain technology experience, our anchor partners like Vanguard, Lewis Ranieri, and Nasdaq will benefit from developing new distributed applications on Assembly, our enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform.”
The Assembly platform allows financial institutions to uphold peer-to-peer transaction without a central authority. Symbiont said that its partners and clients are using the platform to build a more efficient, transparent and safe infrastructure for the industry.
“Symbiont’s technology and platform are purpose built for a wide range of applications within and outside of the financial services industry,” Greg Wasserman, co-head of principal investing at Galaxy Digital, commented. “We have been impressed with Symbiont’s team and their traction with many leading financial institutions. We are excited to support Symbiont’s next stage of growth alongside firms such as Nasdaq and Citi.”
Late in 2017, Symbiont helped Vanguard simplify its index sharing processes using blockchain technology to move the data onto a single, decentralised database. Working alongside the Centre for Research in Security Pricing and Symbiont, Vanguard said the data can be moved instantly between index providers.