Flowdesk raises $30m to expand Market-Making-as-a-Service in Crypto
The firm offers capabilities for asset management, brokerage, custody, and market-making, but the latter is Flowdesk’s flagship service and its most differentiating product.
Flowdesk, a French fintech startup bringing the Market-Making-as-a-Service (MMaaS) model to digital assets, has raised $30 million to fuel product development and expansion into Europe, Asia and North America.
The Series A funding round was led by Eurazeo and Aglae Ventures, with participation from other 15 firms including Coinbase and Speedinvest, and over 20 angel investors from the tech and crypto space.
Founded by Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau, and Balthazar Giraux, Flowdesk is a trading infrastructure that allows interconnection with more than 60 cryptocurrency exchange platforms.
The technology enables four types of services: asset management, brokerage, custody, and market making, but the latter is Flowdesk’s flagship service and its most differentiating product.
Market-Making-as-a-Service (MMaaS) addresses the needs of the majority of the 10,000 cryptocurrency issuers with significant liquidity issues. Flowdesk allows crypto issuers to manage their cryptocurrency token liquidity themselves with their own funds.
The company has quickly grown from a team of four co-founders at the beginning of 2021 to 35 people and plans to recruit to reach 100 employees before the end of 2022.
Flowdesk says it is “facing an extremely strong demand in market-making” and will be addresses such demand by deploying sales and trading teams as well as legal compliance specialists in the United States. The firm has opened offices in Singapore earlier this year.
Flowdesk to launch Crypto MMaS in United States
Guilhem Chaumont, co-founder and CEO of Flowdesk, commented: “This fundraising is a key step that will allow us to accelerate at all levels to meet the growing demand in Europe, Asia and North America. It will also give us the means to develop our technological infrastructure to meet the new needs that will emerge in market making. Our vision is that within 10 years a large proportion of assets will be tokenized using blockchain technology, which will require a rethinking of financial services with a more scalable and counterparty agnostic approach. We will have to scale up quickly to integrate this new financial situation.”
Thomas Turelier, Vice President at Eurazeo, said: “An increasing number of companies are issuing tokens and are thus confronted with the complexity of managing a liquid asset in different markets. Most of these companies do not, however, see themselves as financial market professionals: they are technology providers, game developers… A financial infrastructure such as the one proposed by Flowdesk is therefore crucial to allow all these web3 players to develop with the least possible friction while trusting a regulated player aligned with its customers in terms of financial interests.”
Cyril Guenoun, Partner at Aglaé Ventures, added: “We were convinced by Flowdesk’s positioning as a technology provider for cryptocurrency issuers. This emerging and fast-growing market needs scalable tools to ensure secure and sustainable development. The team has proven the robustness of its solution as well as a business model adapted to its customers. With an already international presence and strong speed of execution, Flowdesk has the means to drive the growth of financial services for cryptocurrencies.”
