Markets Media: Digital assets to transform financial infrastructure

Talos, an institutional technology provider for digital asset trading, has raised $40m (€33m) while State Street has launched a new division for digital finance.

In May 2021 Talos announced the completion of a $40m Series A investment round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors included PayPal Ventures, Fidelity Investments, Galaxy Digital, Elefund, Illuminate Financial, and STEADFAST Capital Ventures.

The firm was founded in 2018 by Anton Katz, chief executive, and Ethan Feldman, chief technology officer, and publicly announced its platform in October last year.

Katz told Markets Media: “The goal for us is to create a service that institutions can use to interact with digital assets by providing an envelope of services.”

Feldman added that Talos has, from the beginning, focussed on supporting the full trade lifecycle including liquidity sourcing, direct market access, price discovery, algorithmic trade execution, transaction cost analysis, reporting, clearing, and settlement.

“The really big players are not just concerned about trade execution but also settlement,” said Feldman. “They want to use a single platform to complete the settlement and that is built into crypto.”

Talos also connects market participants including institutional investors, prime brokers, exchanges, OTC desks, lenders, and custodians through a single point of entry which can be adapted to their individual investment or workflow requirements.

Chris Dixon, general partner Andreessen Horowitz, and Arianna Simpson, partner at the venture capital firm, said in a blog that they were looking to invest in a company that would help bridge the gap between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem.