Key Takeaways:
- Alan Howard’s crypto startup, Elwood Technologies, announced a $70 million Series A investment headed by Goldman Sachs and Dawn Capital this morning.
- Fintech firms, asset managers, and other institutional investors use Elwood’s crypto-focused market access and trading platform. It provides a number of services, including API connectivity to a variety of trading venues, execution, and reporting and analytics.
- Elwood was founded by Howard in 2018. Its initial efforts were centered on creating indexes to provide investors with exposure to blockchain and cryptocurrency.Â
In a recent investment on the widespread adoption of digital assets, Goldman Sachs and Barclays invested in Elwood Technologies, a cryptocurrency buying and selling platform founded by British hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard.
Alan Howard’s crypto startup, Elwood Technologies, announced a $70 million Series A investment headed by Goldman Sachs and Dawn Capital.
Fintech firms, asset managers, and other institutional investors employ Elwood’s crypto-focused market access and trading platform. It provides a number of services, including API connectivity to a variety of trading venues, execution, and reporting and analytics.
Elwood Technologies was “created to satisfy the needs of institutions wanting to protect exposure to digital assets,” according to James Stickland, the company’s CEO.
“We have entered a new chapter in Elwood’s journey and are continuing to extend our capabilities, allowing our institutional clients to provide improved access to digital assets for their users,” he added.
Dawn Capital and the venture divisions of German lender Commerzbank and Galaxy Digital, US billionaire Mike Novogratz’s crypto-financial group, were among the investors. As per individuals familiar with the terms, the round, Elwood’s first outside funding, valued the six-year-old company at over $500 million.
Before the current weekly downward drop, the Elwood fundraising round was agreed upon. The company, which began as a vehicle to handle Howard’s personal crypto fortune, now supplies market data and trading technology to major digital asset investors.
Stickland shrugged aside the decrease, calling the fundraiser “another validation of crypto’s endurance.”
“We’re collecting money from financial institutions that aren’t expecting big returns in a quarter-hour. He remarked, “They’re investing in infrastructure.” “I feel it’s a message of comfort.”
Elwood’s $70 million funding marks a shift in focus for the company, which placed emphasis on asset management and planned to provide institutional investors with crypto fund portfolios. Stickland, who joined Elwood in 2020 to spearhead the business’s drive to become a software provider, said the company now sells the technology it developed in-house to manage its own crypto investments to other clients.
“As institutional demand for cryptocurrencies rises, we have been actively increasing our market presence and capabilities to provide for client demand,” Goldman Sachs’ global head of digital assets, Mathew McDermott, said in a statement.
Elwood’s largest stakeholder is Howard, the former CEO of the hedge firm Brevan Howard. Howard has been significantly investing in the crypto sector since late 2020, backing hundreds of entrepreneurs and establishing businesses. Earlier this year, he formed BH Digital, a crypto-focused section of the hedge fund he founded.
Bloomberg and Elwood Technologies established a strategic partnership last week that will allow investments from Elwood’s market-leading cryptocurrency trading platform to flow directly into Bloomberg AIM, a leading buy-side order management system (OMS).
Elwood’s holistic crypto native solution offers the doorway to institutional access to digital assets, with purpose-built infrastructure, deep liquidity, and vast market data.
Elwood’s systemic cryptocurrency trading capabilities are combined with Bloomberg’s data, analytics, and workflow tools in this integration, allowing financial companies and investment managers on the AIM platform to encapsulate and handle their crypto investments joining the rest of their portfolio for a unified investment process.
