Citi Ventures and venture capital firm Accel on Friday, announced an investment of $6 million in xalts, an institution-focused digital asset management and technology firm founded by former HSBC and Meta executives, a release said.
The investment-grade digital asset management company also raised funds from Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and hedge fund managers. xalts is also backed by quantitative trading and investment firm AlphaGrep.
“With xalts, we are building innovative, institutional-grade investment products and solutions which focus on high compliance and control standards—things institutional investors care about,” said Ashutosh Goyal, a former HSBC trader and the chief investment officer at xalts.
Following this investment, xalts plans to develop fund-based products including mutual funds or exchange-traded funds listed on global exchanges, that are linked to digital assets.
It looks to leverage its technology platform to collaborate with asset management firms and staking infrastructure providers to jointly manage such fund-based products.
According to the release, the digital asset management firm is also developing a structured product and repackaging platform enabling institutions to issue structured notes with embedded crypto options, through collaboration with firms operating in the ecosystem.
“Apart from investors, we are also seeing a lot of interest from fund managers and issuers to use our platform to launch structured and fund products for their clients. We expect to build a team of 30 by the end of this year across our offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Geneva,” said Supreet Kaur, the chief operating officer and co-founder at xalts, discussing the firm’s near-term goals.
xalts is a young digital investments management company founded in 2022, with operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, New Delhi and Geneva.
While this is the first such investment at Citi Ventures, Accel’s Abhinav Chaturvedi sees growth momentum in institutional adoption of digital assets going forward.
However, apart from financial sector investments, private equity firm Accel remains committed to funding players, particularly online marketplaces, as an early-stage investor.
