Clear Street closes $165m Series B funding round
24 May 2022 US
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Clear Street has announced the completion of US$165 million Series B funding round to accelerate the launch of its platform.
This marks Clear Street's first venture capital raise since inception and brings its valuation to US$1.7 billion.
The round was led by growth equity firm Prysm Capital, LLC and included investors NextGen Venture Partners, Walleye Capital, Belvedere, NEAR Foundation, McLaren Strategic Ventures, and Validus Growth Investors.
Angel investors, Illia Polosukhin, Moses Lo and Alastair Trueger were also investors in the funding round.
With this additional capital, Clear Street aims to expand its capabilities to serve fintechs, market makers, and professional traders. It will aid the firm in continuing to grow its team, resources, and form new partnerships to meet its goal of improving access across the capital markets.
Since the beginning of 2021, Clear Street experienced a 220 per cent increase in financing balances, and 510 per cent growth in equity transactional volume. According to the fintech, Clear Street's architecture processes more than US$3 billion in daily trading volume.
Chris Pento, co-founder and chief executive officer at Clear Street comments: "We founded Clear Street to replace the outdated tech infrastructure being used across capital markets.
"It should not take six months to open an account or a year to begin trading a new asset class. Clients are demanding better technology and better service. Our cloud-native platform provides the services and data that investors need to compete in today's markets."
Sachin Kumar, co-founder and chief technology office, adds: "We started with prime brokerage, an area where we had experienced the frustrations caused by operating on outdated technology first-hand.
“As we built out prime services, we realised that 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the infrastructure used to service prime brokerage customers is the same infrastructure used by other market participants, like fintech app developers or market-makers. We have focused heavily on creating platforms that are API-first, such as clearing, settlement and custody, so that we can scale to other parts of the market."
This marks Clear Street's first venture capital raise since inception and brings its valuation to US$1.7 billion.
The round was led by growth equity firm Prysm Capital, LLC and included investors NextGen Venture Partners, Walleye Capital, Belvedere, NEAR Foundation, McLaren Strategic Ventures, and Validus Growth Investors.
Angel investors, Illia Polosukhin, Moses Lo and Alastair Trueger were also investors in the funding round.
With this additional capital, Clear Street aims to expand its capabilities to serve fintechs, market makers, and professional traders. It will aid the firm in continuing to grow its team, resources, and form new partnerships to meet its goal of improving access across the capital markets.
Since the beginning of 2021, Clear Street experienced a 220 per cent increase in financing balances, and 510 per cent growth in equity transactional volume. According to the fintech, Clear Street's architecture processes more than US$3 billion in daily trading volume.
Chris Pento, co-founder and chief executive officer at Clear Street comments: "We founded Clear Street to replace the outdated tech infrastructure being used across capital markets.
"It should not take six months to open an account or a year to begin trading a new asset class. Clients are demanding better technology and better service. Our cloud-native platform provides the services and data that investors need to compete in today's markets."
Sachin Kumar, co-founder and chief technology office, adds: "We started with prime brokerage, an area where we had experienced the frustrations caused by operating on outdated technology first-hand.
“As we built out prime services, we realised that 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the infrastructure used to service prime brokerage customers is the same infrastructure used by other market participants, like fintech app developers or market-makers. We have focused heavily on creating platforms that are API-first, such as clearing, settlement and custody, so that we can scale to other parts of the market."
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