Wells Fargo, Euclid Opportunities Lead Axoni Round Of Fundraising

Axoni, the blockchain startup, raised $18 million in a Series A round of funding, with Wells Fargo and Euclid Opportunities acting as the lead investors in the round. With the $18 million, Axoni has raised more than $20 million, reported American Banker.

According to reports earlier in the week, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Thomson Reuters were named as investors in the latest round of funding. Other investors include venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, FinTech Collective, F-Prime Capital Partners and Digital Currency Group. Axoni “has successfully validated this technology in a variety of capital markets use cases,” C. Thomas Richardson, head of market structure and electronic trading services at Wells Fargo Securities, said, according to the report.

The move on the part of the Wall Street firms comes as financial institutions are looking to gain a footing with blockchain technology, which is the underpinning for bitcoin, the digital currency. The firms think blockchain and other tools can be deployed to reduce a bit of the transaction processing and costs associated with the back office. Axoni’s technology helps banks and other firms create blockchain software for the capital markets.

During the course of the last six months, Axoni has run experiments with some of the biggest players in the financial industry in post-trade processing of credit default swaps and foreign exchange, reported Reuters. Earlier this fall, Axoni announced that Barclays, Credit Suisse Group, JPMorgan and six other firms conducted a test using blockchain software on post-trade processing of over-the-counter swaps, and the test was successful. Reuters noted that, earlier in 2016, the blockchain startup worked with ICAP to test a blockchain service for foreign exchange. Rival blockchain company R3 CEV recently reduced the size of the investment it is seeking to raise to $150 million from $200 million, noted the report.