According to a recent report by Forbes, Axoni – an enterprise-based blockchain solution startup has been able to raise US$32 million in a series B funding round championed by Goldman Sachs and Nyca Partners. The fervor surrounding Axoni’s development isn’t so surprising, seeing as the company has developed its own native blockchain platform – AxCore which serves as the framework for deploying its applications, allowing the startup to offer blockchain services to large financial institutions and capital market service providers all over the world.
The series B funding round had other participants including JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citi, Y Combinator, Digital Currency Group, and Andreessen Horowitz. This new investment brings Axoni’s cumulative financing to US$55 million. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have shown particular interest in the development of the AxCore; perhaps this could foreshadow potential future partnerships with Axoni.
Greg Schvey, Axoni’s co-founder, appears to agree with this observation. In an interview with Forbes, he stated that this round of investments goes beyond sourcing for capital; series B funding is a means for forming a “deep strategic” partnership since most of the investors are already pro-blockchain financial institutions.
In 2016, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citigroup successfully tested AxCore, Axoni’s blockchain platform. This pilot project gave credibility to the platform and boosted investors’ confidence in the startup. Axoni also teamed up with 11 firms late in 2017 to prove the viability of its blockchain platform for managing equity swaps. This pilot was successful and involved the implementation of smart contracts in a peer-to-peer network environment that enforces perpetual reconciliation. Once more, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were part of the firms participating in this pilot phase.
Since its inception in 2016, Axoni has worked on a number of projects including a collaboration with Clearmatics to issue and settle derivatives contracts on the blockchain; a move touted as being revolutionary for blockchain interoperability. However, despite being in its developmental stage, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) appears to be Axoni’s most significant project. Upon its launch, DTCC is expected to become the highest financial value processor in the world; capable of handling $1.6 quadrillion security-based transactions every year. DTCC announced a partnership with Axoni, IBM, and R3 to help optimize its Trade Information Warehouse (TIW) to build derivative blockchain solutions for post-trade processing by leveraging the AxCore blockchain.
Speaking on the project development, CEO of DTCC Deriv/SERV, Chris Childs had this to say:
“IBM, Axoni and R3 offer valued DLT expertise as well as a strong commitment to the Hyperledger community and industry standards. We are pleased that they have chosen to leverage their collective expertise and collaborate with us on this initiative, which will allow us to build the best solution for the marketplace while minimizing cost to the industry and expediting our speed to market.”
With its new capital fund firmly secured, Axoni has said that it plans to use the cash to pursue further development of AxLang (its Ethereum compatible smart contract language) and data synchronization technologies. Axoni also intends to increase the number of distributed products on AxCore. Regarding its future plans, the startup hopes to be able to help its current enterprise clients integrate their own users into three of its blockchain platforms which are nearing completion.
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