Three major financial institutions, Citi, Wells Fargo and BNY Mellon, are among the new investors of United States-based Telos, which is a developer of institutional cryptocurrency trading technology, as the company closed a $105 million funding round.
Telos is yet to make any official announcement, but multiple media houses have already reported on the funding round. The latest Series B funding has raised the valuation of the startup to $1.25 billion.
Based in New York, Telos was founded in 2018. The platform provides technology and support to financial institutions for enabling digital asset trading. Its offerings include liquidity access, direct market access, price discovery, automated execution , clearing and settlement, making it a suitable trading technology platform.
Big Backers
The latest funding round in the company was led by the technology investor, General Atlantic. Other existing investors including Fidelity Investments, Andreessen Horowitz and PayPal Ventures also participated in the Series B round.
Apart from the three big banks, the other new investors in the crypto startup are DRW, SCB 10x, Stripes and Voyager.
Telos will use the proceeds from the funding round to scale and diversify its platform. It has further plans to accelerate its expansion plans in APAC and Europe. On the product side, the company wants to support end-to-end trade for cryptocurrencies.
Last year, the company closed its Series A funding round, raising $40 million.
Telos raised the fresh capital when the cryptocurrency market has taken a bearish turn. Bitcoin lost more than half of its value from its peak and is trading at around $31,500, as of press time. The recent devaluation of some other cryptocurrencies is even more grave.
But, the interest of traditional financial institutions in the crypto startup shows that institutional investors are expecting the rising demand for cryptocurrencies in the future.
Meanwhile, several banks are starting to offer crypto trading services. Singapore’s DBS has been offering such services for a while now, but it is only limited to institutions.
