With the market down, crypto companies are having a hard time attracting investors. Except for a few like... Taurus.
The Swiss company, which offers crypto services to financial institutions, just raised $65 million in a Series B round. And not from just anyone, as the main investors are big banks - Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group and Arab Bank Switzerland.
With this fundraising, Taurus, which already raised $10 million in 2020 (Series A), wants to accelerate its development in Switzerland (read our report) and abroad.
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"We will continue to recruit engineers and get closer to our customers by opening offices in Europe. The first office will be in Paris," says co-founder Lamine Brahimi.
Founded in 2018 by former bankers, Taurus, which now has about 60 employees, has quickly made a name for itself among financial institutions looking to get a foot - or more - into the crypto ocean. The company offers trading, custody and tokenization services.
Today, it works with just over 25 financial institutions located in eight countries and on three continents. "Our goal is to continue to bring traditional finance on board," says Lamine Brahimi.
In Switzerland, Taurus works with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet, Swissquote or Vontobel. In France, the company provides its infrastructure to CACEIS (a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole) and to Delubac, the only bank that is registered as a digital asset service provider (DASP) with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). "We will soon sign two large French clients," says Lamine Brahimi.
Taurus has also been involved in about 15 tokenization transactions in recent months with Swiss- and EU-based issuers, including banks and asset managers, as well as SMEs and startups. This growing practice of digitizing real-world assets has benefited from clearer regulation in recent months... and that could benefit Taurus.
"We are convinced that private markets will be tokenized: shares of unlisted companies, debt, everything that is not listed on the stock markets," says Lamine Brahimi.
The Swiss company is not the only one to want to position itself on this flourishing market. This is notably the case of Fireblocks, which works with other giants such as BNP Paribas and Société Générale.
The Israeli company had raised $550 million in early 2022 for a valuation of $8 billion (Taurus' valuation was not disclosed). The big difference is that Fireblocks only does cryptos and Taurus is regulated by Finma, the Swiss equivalent of the AMF.
"We are the only Tech company to have made the proactive choice to be regulated, which is a great guarantee of credibility for our customers," insists Lamine Brahimi.
