By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 12th, 2024
Final round increased the total sum of investment to $60 million.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and IBM have joined the funding round to Digital Asset Holdings LLC increasing the final sum to $60 million. “The addition of Goldman Sachs and IBM as investors in Digital Asset will continue to help drive the global adoption of this transformative technology,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset in the statement.
It hasn’t been long since Digital Asset has managed to raise $50 million from several world’s leading companies. The initial list of investors included ABN AMRO, Accenture, ASX Limited, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., Citi, CME Ventures, Deutsche Börse Group, ICAP, J.P. Morgan, Santander InnoVentures, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, commented on the first round of funding in the press release: “These investments represent a tremendous endorsement of Digital Asset from banks, exchanges, settlement and clearing firms, central securities depositories, and market infrastructure and professional services providers. Our strategic investors have come together from across the financial services industry to help drive global adoption of transformative solutions which enhance the vital services that they provide.”
The final $10 million were invested by such giants as Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banking firms, and IBM, world’s leading software and hardware manufacturer.
“We have long held the view at Goldman Sachs that by embracing innovation and technology, we can better serve our clients, further improve our risk-management capabilities, and enhance operational efficiency,” said Paul Walker, Global Co-Head of Technology at Goldman Sachs. “We believe that distributed ledger technology will play a transformative role in the way financial institutions transact globally and we look forward to working with Digital Asset and the broader financial and technical community to engage this emerging technology.”
Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and Vice President, echoes: “We are excited to jointly develop distributed ledger technologies that will allow our clients to transform their business, and further strengthen our partnership with Digital Asset. Blockchain holds real potential to transform a wide range of industries and IBM is committed to making it ready for business.”
Now Digital Asset aims at adoption of distributed ledger technology to financial services. The software developed by the company can improve post-trade processing efficiency and security as well as to reduce cost, latency, errors, risk and capital requirements.
Digital Asset has recently partnered with JPMorgan to trial the blockchain project. The companies are now testing several applications for the technology, including addressing liquidity mismatches in JPMorgan’s loan funds, which normally let investors take out their money at short notice — even though the underlying assets can require much more time to sell.