Blockchain startup Digital Asset, which develops tech for financial institutions, raises $40M Series B, bringing the company's total funding to $110M
Anna Irrera / Reuters :
Context & Ripple Effects
This $40M Series B is the third act in a fast funding sequence: Digital Asset's $52M raise in early 2016 came alongside an ASX partnership to build distributed ledger tech for exchanges, and weeks later Goldman Sachs and IBM joined the round, pushing the total to $60M. The October 2017 round takes the company to $110M raised — still squarely in the era of permissioned, institution-facing blockchain.
What makes the story worth tracking is where that capital went next: a $120M round in 2021, then a pivot to the Canton Network, a public blockchain with privacy features for regulated institutions, funded by a $135M round co-led by DRW and Tradeweb in 2025 and reportedly a ~$300M round at a ~$2B valuation led by a16z crypto in 2026.
First-order effects
- Digital Asset gains an extended runway to keep building distributed ledger products for banks and exchanges, with the ASX work and Goldman/IBM backing already anchoring its credibility with financial institutions.
Second-order effects
- Market-infrastructure players follow the money: by 2025 the investor base shifts from strategic corporates to trading firms — DRW and Tradeweb co-leading the Canton round signals principals, not just vendors, betting on the rails.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise blockchain consolidates around a few platforms that graduate from private ledgers to public chains with privacy controls — Digital Asset's reported ~$2B valuation on Canton marks that transition from experiment to financial-market infrastructure.
The trend: Institutional blockchain is moving from bank-consortium pilots toward regulated public networks like Canton, with each funding round pulling trading firms and crypto-native capital deeper into market infrastructure.