Symbiont Raises $20

Thanks to Fortune Magazine –

Symbiont announced $20 million in Series B funding led by Nasdaq Ventures. Investors including Galaxy Digital, Citi, and Raptor Group also participated in the round.

With that influx of cash, Symbiont plans to take its technology from the research and development phase into the deployment stage. The firm has focused on creating a permissioned blockchain network for financial purposes. So unlike, say, Bitcoin’s blockchain network, which anyone can see, Symbiont’s network requires the permission of its users for a new party to enter.

“We’re no longer interested in experiments and in proving the value,” Smith said.

For the company, that means building out its existing products. Symbiont has already partnered with Ranieri Solutions, a fintech investment firm founded by Lewis Ranieri, the so-called father of mortgage-backed securities, to track mortgages from origination to final destination. The firm is also working in other opaque or peer-to-peer area that it believes will benefit from blockchain technology. For instance, Symbiont is also building a system with Vanguard to track index constituents.

It’s in part due to these high profile partnerships that investors have come to see potential in the blockchain firm.

“We have been impressed with Symbiont’s team and their traction with many leading financial institutions,” said Greg Wasserman, co-head of principal investing at Galaxy Digital, in a statement. “We are excited to support Symbiont’s next stage of growth alongside firms such as Nasdaq and Citi.”