Symbiont.io Inc., today announced the closing of a $20m Series B funding round to continue its growth as the market-leading blockchain platform for the global financial markets. The round was led by Nasdaq Ventures with participation from additional new investors including Galaxy Digital, Citi, Raptor Group, and others.

“Closing this round of funding enables us to accelerate investments in our platform and team,” said Symbiont CEO and Co-founder Mark Smith. “Leveraging our financial markets and blockchain technology experience, our anchor partners like Vanguard, Lewis Ranieri, and the NASDAQ will benefit from developing new distributed applications on Assembly, our enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform. Assembly provides the opportunity for new participants to enter the digital asset market and offers existing participants a superior infrastructure on which to build the future of financial markets.”

Symbiont will use this funding round to accelerate deployments across multiple business verticals including Data Management, Mortgages, Private Equity, and Syndicated Loans. In addition to the investment, Nasdaq will explore new business opportunities to utilize Symbiont’s enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform, Assembly™, with existing and new clients that are seeking smart contract and tokenization solutions.

“We are committed to discovering and investing in innovative technologies to help build our future market infrastructure used by more than 100 marketplaces around the world,” said Gary Offner, Head of Nasdaq Ventures. “Our investment will also include the integration of Symbiont’s enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform into the Nasdaq Financial Framework. We are pleased to support this important, growing area for creating unique institutional applications of blockchain technology.”

Assembly enables financial institutions to maintain the peer-to-peer nature of their transactions with no central authority, while also receiving the benefits of a shared database with end-to-end privacy. Symbiont’s partners and clients are using Assembly to build the next wave of financial infrastructure without having to surrender control of their data or their direct relationships with their clients. Together they hope to build a more efficient, transparent and safe infrastructure for the financial services industry and the end user.

“Symbiont’s technology and platform are purpose built for a wide range of applications within and outside of the financial services industry. We have been impressed with Symbiont’s team and their traction with many leading financial institutions. We are excited to support Symbiont’s next stage of growth alongside firms such as Nasdaq and Citi,” said Greg Wasserman, Co-Head of Principal Investing at Galaxy Digital.