Aplo Raises $10M Series A to scale digital asset trading platform for institutional investors
The round will fuel the growth of Aplo’s platform that provides institutional investors with simple, efficient, and regulated access to the digital asset market
Paris, France — October 12th, 2021 — Aplo, the company that provides institutional investors with access to the digital assets marketplace, today announces the closure of a $10 million Series A funding round. Today’s funding brings the company’s total investment to $11m and was led by Atomico, with participation from Semantic, angel investors Pascal Gauthier (CEO of Ledger) and Alexis Bonillo (co-founder of Zenly) and all existing investors. Atomico Partner Siraj Khaliq will join Aplo's board as part of this investment.
“Digital assets are fast becoming an integral part of the global financial market. No longer the reserve of retail investors, the resilience of bitcoin and its peers has demonstrated that the digital asset class is here to stay,” said Aplo CEO and co-founder Oliver Yates. “ With the volume of institutional trading increasing from $18 billion to $57 billion over the course of 2020 alone, the time is right for us to scale our trading platform and provide more institutional investors than ever with access to the digital asset market. ”
Despite significant interest from institutional investors, major firms have been deterred from embracing cryptocurrency trading primarily because of the limited infrastructure that exists to manage currencies between banks, exchanges, custodians and over-the-counter (OTC) providers, which creates friction in the trading process and exposes traders to unnecessary risks. Aplot provides institutional investors with a consolidated view of multiple crypto exchanges and OTCs, and greatly simplifies the process of trading on them. It allows customers to execute trades anywhere, simply by depositing funds directly with Aplo.
“This year, Goldman Sachs and Blackrock each declared Bitcoin an official asset class. Traditional consumer payment companies like Paypal and Mastercard entered the fray by adding crypto payments to their networks,” said Atomico Partner Siraj Khaliq. “The snowball effect among institutional players is fast continuing, luckily Aplo is perfectly positioned to help them build out and manage their digital asset strategies.”
Aplo provides access to digital assets through its smart order routing algorithms, which lead the industry for capacity, flexibility and execution in the cryptocurrency market. Aplo is an EU-registered broker that prevents investors from needing to navigate a patchwork of rules and regulations that breed uncertainty. An inventory management system ensures that customer trades can be executed on any exchange or OTC while ensuring the capital is never needlessly exposed.
“We appreciate Aplo's advanced platform because it allows us to execute very large trades across multiple global crypto exchanges, in a regulated way, using advanced algorithms. This has been a game-changer for us when it comes to saving time, manpower and trading costs compared to trying to execute the same volume of trades manually,” said Benjamin Tsai, President & Managing Partner at Wave Financial.
Aplo will deploy the funding to scale its prime broker services and push into new product areas that will fully realize the potential of cryptocurrency trading for institutional investors. In the future, Aplo will make decentralized financial services more accessible and efficient for every business – from SMEs to major funds.