Securitize, the trusted global solution for issuing and managing compliant digital securities on the blockchain, has secured a $14M strategic fundraise with backers that include three of the world’s largest banks – Banco Santander through its venture capital arm (Santander InnoVentures), MUFG via its wholly-owned corporate venture capital subsidiary (MUFG Innovation Partners), and Nomura Holdings, to further develop its technology platform to modernize the legacy securities industry.
“Bringing on key strategic investors like Santander InnoVentures, MUFG, and Nomura, as well as leading blockchain investors, validates how transformative digital securities are for traditional financial markets. Their investment in Securitize ensures that we can continue to drive adoption and innovation with our execution and industry-leading technology,” said Carlos Domingo, Co-Founder and CEO of Securitize.
This latest fundraise is an extension of Securitize’s Series A round and brings its total financing to north of $30M. Existing series A investors, Blockchain Capital, SPiCE VC, and SeedRocket4Founders also participated in this latest round. The backing of these well-established global financial institutions validates the power of Securitize’s technology to transform the way securities move and function in capital markets.
Securitize’s DS Protocol, which compliantly manages secondary trading and corporate actions for digital securities, currently has the highest adoption rate in the industry with 11 digital securities currently issued, five trading on public marketplaces, and dozens more in the pipeline.
“As we bet on companies that are 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 Manuel Silva Martínez, Partner and Head of Investments at Santander InnoVentures. “We are excited to work with Carlos and his team to revolutionize the capital markets industry together.”
“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,” said Nobutake Suzuki, President & CEO, MUFG Innovation Partners. “Through our investment in Securitize, MUIP is seeking to establish a strategic relationship and promote further collaboration in the future.”
The investment round also demonstrates a growing appetite in Asia for digital securities with participants including 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.
