Talos takes a major leap forward in 2021, setting the stage for massive 2022 expansion

2021 was an absolutely transformational year for Talos. Our business – now three years old – took material steps forward across all facets of the business during the year. While some of our growth was fueled by the backing we received from the biggest investment partners in the industry – who participated in our $40 million Series A round in May – a significant and increasing part of our success is the swelling roster of firms now entrusting us to provide key components of their digital asset trading workflows.

Key Highlights:

• Team: Talos entered 2021 with 11 employees. We exited it with almost 50, with plans to continue significantly staffing up this year. Key hires in 2021 included Alfonse Mandese as Head of Sales and Business Development, Justin Schmidt as Head of Strategy, Ant Ludlow as Head of Product Design and Samar Sen as Head of Asia-Pacific. We added headcount in every functional area, with a particular focus on our engineering, product management, client service and sales/business development groups.
• Global Expansion: With Samar’s hiring in November and our expansion beyond the US and Europe, we became a truly global company. Samar is currently building out our Singapore-based regional headquarters, and we expect to have a full team of engineering, client service, product, and operational staff in place by mid year.
• Platform: We continued to enhance Talos’s product offering in 2021, adding key functionality such as the ability to define and trade synthetic pairs that include FX and crypto legs. Our platform – which is accessible through a single API or a web-based GUI – supports the entirety of the trade lifecycle, and advanced new features solving key operational issues outside of the trading workflow are being prepared for launch over the next few months.
• Partner Network: Our liquidity network also expanded significantly in 2021, with a number of new exchanges, OTC desks, and FX and settlement providers being added throughout the year. We now provide seamless and secure access to over 30 digital asset counterparties, with more in the queue.
• Client Roster: Our customer base continued to grow over the year, as both new clients came aboard and existing clients significantly scaled their usage. We are now actively supporting or in the process of onboarding a number of the industry’s most notable firms, with many using Talos on a white-label basis to power their digital asset trading offerings. Further scaling our support organization to meet this demand is a key focus, with Singapore currently being staffed to serve as our follow-the-sun support hub.
• Service Provider Growth: Finally, a key component of our significant growth this year is the continued traction we’ve made with our service provider clients, who are able to white-label our offerings to provide their customers with a one-stop shop to launch their digital asset businesses. A clear sign of market maturation, a large number of our expanding set of service provider clients are emerging from traditional markets. These firms include prime brokers, OTC desks, exchanges, custodians, retail brokers and lenders. Overall, our business mix is now about 50% buy-side investors and 50% service providers.

For 2022, further building out our team (see open roles here), delivering on the product roadmap to broaden and diversify our platform, and executing on our business goals are our primary objectives. As we continue steadily scaling our business globally, we will never lose sight of what’s gotten us to this point: a commitment to building the best team in the business, a dedication to the highest possible level of client service, and an overriding focus on delivering in digital assets the caliber of platform that our clients have come to rely on in other asset classes.