Singapore-based Cobo, which provides crypto custody and financial services, raises $40M Series B co-led by DST Global, A&T Capital, and IMO Ventures
Kate Park / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Cobo's $40M Series B lands in the middle of a dense stretch of Singapore crypto-finance raises: iSTOX pulled in $50M for fractional private-markets access in January 2021, and AscendEX followed with a $50M Series B at a $455M valuation just weeks before this round. The common thread is global money backing Singapore-domiciled firms building institutional-grade crypto financial plumbing.
The round also previews an escalation: months after Cobo's raise, rival custodian Hex Trust raised $88M across Hong Kong and Singapore institutional clients, and Amber Group extended its Series B to $328M total at a $3B valuation with Temasek leading — custody and trading infrastructure in the city-state were drawing progressively larger checks.
First-order effects
- DST Global, A&T Capital, and IMO Ventures take positions alongside Cobo, giving the custody-and-financial-services startup capital to expand beyond its existing wallet and staking products.
- Cobo now competes head-to-head with Hex Trust for the same institutional custody, brokerage, and financing mandates across Hong Kong and Singapore — the two firms' service menus are near-identical.
Second-order effects
- Hex Trust's larger follow-on raise signals that Cobo's round was part of a competitive arms race rather than a one-off: custodians are scaling balance sheets to win institutional clients who prize counterparty size.
- Trading platforms like AscendEX and Amber Group, both raising at billion-dollar-plus valuations in the same window, deepen the demand pool for third-party custody — every new exchange round enlarges Cobo's addressable market.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, custody stops being a standalone product and becomes bundled infrastructure — staking, brokerage, and financing layered onto the same regulated wrapper, concentrating the sector around a few well-capitalized Singapore hubs.
- Singapore's role as a jurisdiction where US, Chinese, and Western funds can all co-invest (DST Global, Temasek, Hack VC appearing across the same cohort) points toward the city-state consolidating as the neutral clearinghouse for digital-asset finance capital.
The trend: Global venture capital is converging on Singapore as the neutral home base for crypto financial infrastructure, with each successive Series B in the cohort larger than the last.