In recent years, the tokenisation of real-world assets, from money market funds to bonds, has accelerated rapidly, driven by regulatory clarity and growing institutional adoption. However, despite this momentum, financial institutions continue to face challenges when operating on blockchain infrastructure, particularly around interoperability, privacy and regulatory compliance. That is why we are pleased to announce our investment in Digital Asset Holdings (DA), a company building the foundational infrastructure to enable financial institutions to scale and transact in this new digital asset ecosystem.
Why we invested - Digital Asset
Bridging Fragmentation in Institutional Blockchain Infrastructure
The premise of blockchain was to facilitate a shared network across all parties, yet the market has evolved into a fragmented landscape of public and private chains with limited interoperability. On one hand, public blockchains offer openness and connectivity but fall short on privacy, compliance and regulatory control; on the other hand, private chains cover these but do not natively provide shared infrastructure, interoperability frameworks or network effects for trading across institutions.
The Canton Network, created by DA, is a recent entrant in the blockchain space and is a public permissioned blockchain that combines the benefits of both models. Canton’s “network-of-networks” architecture enables institutions to operate independent applications while remaining fully interoperable and maintaining privacy, control and compliance. This unlocks new use cases such as real-time collateral optimisation, intraday repo and 24/7 settlement, supporting a more efficient and dynamic financial system. Although Canton is now run independently, DA remains an important operator on it.
A Platform Enabling the Next Phase of Financial Markets Digitisation
DA provides the technology to issue, manage and trade financial instruments on Canton, enabling programmable and automated transactions across multiple participants. Leveraging its DAML smart contract language, DA enables the specific permissioning of data access and hence transaction privacy, as well as the programmability of transactions and hence 24/7 automated trading.
The Company operates globally and is led by an exemplary management team with experience in both TradFi and DeFi. DA has experienced very rapid growth in the last year as its Canton operations have scaled. It is supported by prominent investors such as Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Nasdaq, Tradeweb, S&P, ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Boerse, Broadridge, DRW, 7Ridge, and others. Andreessen Horowitz, a leading US VC, led the equity round.
Investing in the Future of Financial Market Infrastructure
Our investment in DA reflects our conviction that the future of financial markets will be built on interoperable, institution-grade digital infrastructure. As tokenised assets move from pilots to production, the ability to transact securely, privately, and in real time across institutions will become increasingly critical.
By partnering with Digital Asset, we are positioning ourselves at the forefront of this transformation, supporting the development of infrastructure that can unlock new efficiencies across trading, collateral management, and asset servicing. Together, we are helping shape a more connected, resilient and digitally native financial ecosystem.