Digital asset issuance and management platform Securitize has raised $14 million in a funding round led by three big multinational banks: Banco Santander (InnoVentures), MUFG (Mitsubishi’s VC arm) and Nomura Holdings. The investment is a solid recognition of the growing relevance of digitization of securities and the importance for traditional banks to engage in this sector of Fintech.
Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, said that bringing on key investors validates how transformative digital securities are for global financial markets:
“Their investment in Securitize ensures that we can continue to drive adoption and innovation with our execution and industry-leading technology,” said Domingo.
Securitize notes that this latest funding round is an extension of Securitize’s Series A round. Securitize has now raised over $30 million.
Existing investors in the Series A include, Blockchain Capital, SPiCE VC, and SeedRocket4Founders.
Securitize’s “DS Protocol,” which also manages secondary trading and corporate actions for digital securities, is said to have the highest adoption rate in the industry with 11 digital securities currently issued, five trading on public marketplaces, and dozens more in the pipeline.
Manuel Silva Martínez, Partner and Head of Investments at Santander InnoVenture, explained they were betting on companies “reengineering core pieces of our industry’s infrastructure through blockchain technologies.”
“Securitize is an obvious addition to our portfolio that further enables Santander taking part in the nascent digital securities markets,” said Martínez. “We are excited to work with Carlos and his team to revolutionize the capital markets industry together.”
Nobutake Suzuki, President & CEO, MUFG Innovation Partners, added that digital securities are increasingly becoming a leading use case for distributed ledger technologies within the financial services industry.
“Securitize has emerged as a leading solutions provider within this rapidly growing space. Through our investment in Securitize, MUIP is seeking to establish a strategic relationship and promote further collaboration in the future.”
Additional participants in the round included KDDI Open Innovation fund, the corporate venture arm of KDDI, one of the largest telecom companies in Japan, 31 Ventures, the innovation arm of Mitsui Fudosan, one of the world’s largest real estate developers from Japan, leading Hong Kong blockchain VC firm Kenetic Capital and the first China-based venture capital firm solely dedicated to blockchain, Fenbushi Capital.
The Tezos Foundation and Algo VC have also participated in the round to strategically collaborate with Securitize for digitizing securities on the Tezos and Algorand blockchains.
“Securitize is a pioneer in on-chain digital securities and has a strong founders team. The Tezos Foundation’s mission is to fund strategically relevant projects and businesses building on Tezos, therefore we see a perfect match,” said Hubertus Thonhauser, member of the board of the Tezos Foundation.
In November 2018, Securitize raised US$12.75M in a Series A round from top tier blockchain technology investors including Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Ripple Ventures, Global Brains and NXTP.