Citi Joins Goldman, JP Morgan in Investing in Blockchain Startup Axoni

Fintech investments may have tanked this year but from the looks of things, the big banks are still in the game.

In a press release, distributed ledger startup Axoni announced that banking giant Citi has joined its Series A round. Citi’s appearance apparently lifted the total amount raised to $20 million, and allowed Citi to join a noteworthy group of investors which included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Andreessen Horowitz.

This was apparently a direct investment from the firm, rather than through its venture arm, and according to Fintek News, the dollar value was roughly $2 million. How much the round valued Axoni itself however, was not disclosed.

Citi apparently has a history working with the New York-based capital markets tech firm. As per Axoni’s release, the two have joined together on a “number of successful, high-profile distributed ledger deployments” that have purportedly “validated the technology and its benefits of data synchronization, automation, and auditability to market participants.” What sort of deployments, you say? Well they apparently include projects such as the “optimization of post-trade data management for credit default swaps and equity swaps, as well as the collaborative management of reference data among industry participants.”

Was this an awesome deal? Fintek News’ Bill Taylor doesn’t seem to think so, but in any case, here’s what Axoni CEO, Greg Schvey, had to say:

“Having the support and domain expertise of a world-class institution such as Citi will allow us to execute our vision even more broadly and rapidly – we are delighted to have Citi join Axoni’s investor group.”

Photo: Matt Buck