Paris-based digital asset service provider Flowdesk raises €28.3M to expand its infrastructure and trading platform

Paris-based Flowdesk, a digital asset financial technology provider that is building a trading infrastructure to provide market-making services for web3 players, announced on Monday that it has raised $30M (approximately €28.33M) in a fresh round of funding.

The investment came from Eurazeo, Aglae Ventures, ISAI, Speedinvest, Fabric.vc, Ledger, and Coinbase. 20 well-known business angels also participated in this round, including Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Nicolas Julia (Sorare), Pascal Gauthier (Ledger), and Sébastien Borget (The Sandbox).

Thomas Turelier, VP at Eurazeo, says, “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.”

A trading infrastructure made in France

Founded in 2020 by Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau, and Balthazar Giraux, Flowdesk is a digital asset service provider registered in France with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).

The company has created a system for trading that enables connectivity to more than 60 sites for bitcoin exchange. Asset management, brokerage, custody, and market-making are the four service categories that the Flowdesk platform provides. It has offices in Paris and Singapore.

Flowdesk’s co-founders have been working in the cryptocurrency industry since 2017 after careers in finance, algorithmic trading, engineering, and entrepreneurship. The siloing and fragmentation of markets, as well as the lack of technology to manage the liquidity of crypto-asset ventures, characterises their respective experiences. They made the decision to build the infrastructure in 2020 so that they could connect and trade on these exchanges, while ensuring the redundancy and scalability required to support the increasing number of crypto projects.

Among its four service categories, market-making is Flowdesk’s flagship service. It addresses the needs of the majority of the 10,000 cryptocurrency issuers with significant liquidity issues. By making its technology and traders available to these players, Flowdesk allows them to manage their cryptocurrency token liquidity themselves with their own funds. The service is called Market-Making-as-a-Service in reference to digital models based on simply providing technology to customers who commit their own resources.

Flowdesk’s clients include more than 50 cryptocurrency token issuers, companies and investment funds.

Capital utilisation

Flowdesk, which currently employs 35 people, says it will use the funds to reach 100 employees before the end of 2022. The company reports having a strong demand for its market-making service and after having opened offices in Singapore in March 2022, it is now targeting the US to deploy sales and trading teams. It is also looking for legal compliance specialists, a strategic topic for the company and its constantly changing regulatory market.

Co-founder Guilhem Chaumont says, “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 tokenised 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.”

Another goal of this funding is to continue to invest in innovation with the aim of developing a complete platform for Flowdesk’s clients, allowing them to carry out the simplest to the most complex trading operations themselves.

Brief about the investors

Eurazeo, an investment group with more than €32B AUM, claims to be one of the most active tech investors in Europe. The group has backed ambitious entrepreneurs from Seed up to pre-IPO with investments in Onfido, Tink, Criteo, Talend, Swile, Mano Mano, and Wefox, among others.

Aglae Ventures, the “tech” investment vehicle of Groupe Arnault, invests between €100K and €100M in fast-growing technology companies. Present in France and the US, the firm focuses on SaaS software, marketplaces and content platforms. Some of its portfolio companies include Airbnb, Algolia, Backmarket, Databricks, Lyft, Meero, Riskified, Slack, and Spotify.

Aglae Ventures’ partner, Cyril Guenoun, says, “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.”

ISAI is the Tech Entrepreneurs’ Fund and brings together a community of over 350 entrepreneurs around the world. ISAI Gestion, with over €500M AUM, aims to finance and support high-potential tech companies, at the Seed/post-Seed stage or when they have already reached the break-even stage.