Axoni, a distributed ledger tech firm, has scored another big-bank investor in Citigroup.
The New York startup would not specify the amount Citi has invested in it, but it now sizes its Series A round at more than $20 million. When the round was announced in December, with Wells Fargo and Euclid Opportunities, ICAP’s fintech investment business, as the lead investors, the total was $18 million. Simple math therefore suggests Citi put in more than $2 million.
It is worth noting that the investment is coming from Citi itself, not the company's Citi Ventures fund. Axoni’s other Series A investors include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Thomson Reuters, Andreessen Horowitz, FinTech Collective, F-Prime Capital Partners and Digital Currency Group.
The banks' backing of Axoni speaks to a larger trend occurring in the nascent blockchain field: the spreading of bets. Banks are joining — and in some cases, leaving — various projects as they try to pick the winners in the still-evolving technology field.
Signage is displayed outside of a Citigroup inc. Citibank branch in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Monday, July 13, 2015. Citigroup Inc. is expected to report second-quarter earnings results on July 16. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Although Citi is new to the company as an investor, the two companies “have collaborated on a number of successful, high-profile distributed ledger deployments that have validated the technology and its benefits of data synchronization, automation, and auditability to market participants,” Axoni said in a press release Thursday.
Those projects include the optimization of post-trade data management for credit-default and equity swaps and the management of reference data. Citi is also “actively engaged” in Axoni’s work in the replatforming of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s trade information warehouse, the startup said.
In January, the DTCC tapped IBM, in partnership with Axoni and R3, to use distributed ledger technology to improve post-trade events in derivatives such as record keeping and payment management.
More than 400,000 consumers may be affected after Marquis Software Solutions suffered a breach traced to a bug in SonicWall software disclosed last year.
Midland States Bancorp has completed three major asset sales in the past 12 months, exiting national business lines and shifting focus to its core community banking franchise.
The Canadian bank is determined to grow its U.S. business organically, CEO Darryl White said Thursday. But with so much excess capital, analysts wondered about the bank's appetite for M&A.
The Canadian bank still has more work to do as it rolls out additional processes, technology and training. TD will also have to prove to regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice that its actions are sustainable.
