Geneva-based Taurus raises €60.4M from Credit Suisse, others: Know more

Geneva-based Taurus, a company developing market infrastructure for digital assets, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $65M (approximately €60.4M) in a Series B round of funding led by Credit Suisse.

Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group, and Cedar Mundi Ventures, and Series A investors Arab Bank Switzerland and Investis, also participated in the round.

Taurus co-founders Lamine Brahimi, Sébastien Dessimoz, Oren-Olivier Puder, and Dr. Jean-Philippe Aumasson remain the largest shareholders of the company. 

The transaction was approved by the Swiss regulator FINMA.

Taurus says it will use the capital to fund its growth strategy across three main priorities:

• Hire top engineering talent 
• Maintain stringent security, risk, and compliance requirements across product lines, processes, and organisations.
• Taurus will accelerate its technology sales expansion with new offices in Europe, UAE, and soon after in the Americas and South-East Asia

Lamine Brahimi, co-founder and Managing Partner of Taurus, says, “Raising $65M in the current market environment tells a lot about the quality of Taurus’ people and products. We are proud to welcome such high-profile investors and benefit from their expertise to further develop one of the richest platforms in the industry, covering any type of digital assets, way beyond cryptocurrencies.”

Taurus: Developing digital asset platform

Founded in 2018, Taurus provides enterprise-grade infrastructure to issue, custody, and trade any digital assets such as cryptocurrencies including staking, tokenised assets, and digital currencies. 

Additionally, the company also operates a regulated marketplace for private assets and tokenised securities. 

Taurus claims that it has been involved in tokenising 15 deals with Swiss-based and EU-based issuers, including banks and asset managers as well as SMEs and startups.

The Swiss company works with over 25 financial institutions and corporate clients in eight countries and three continents. Clients include  systemically important financial institutions, retail and online banks, private banks, crypto-banks, investment banks, and broker-dealers. 

Amongst its clients are also banks such as Arab Bank Switzerland, CACEIS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet, Swissquote, and Vontobel. 

André Helfenstein, CEO of Credit Suisse (Switzerland) Ltd, says “The strategic partnership with Taurus is a cornerstone of the Swiss Bank division’s digital assets strategy with the ambition to become the leading Swiss bank in that space. We continue to embrace new and innovative technologies and expect to soon launch several digital asset services for clients both on the issuing and the investment side.”

Sabih Behzad, Head of Digital Assets and Currencies Transformation, Deutsche Bank, concludes, “We will integrate Taurus’ technology in our own IT environment. This will form a key part of our digital asset custody platform and will make it easier for us to develop and roll out our digital asset custody offering. Through this investment, Deutsche Bank is delighted to partner on the development of the market for digital assets.”