UK-based Trustology announced a seed fundraising round of $8 million led by Two Sigma Ventures, the early-stage venture capital fund of the systematic investment manager. Also participating in the financing was ConsenSys, a global blockchain company founded by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin that provided an incubator for the startup.
Trustology is developing technology and services to help private and institutional clients secure digital assets. Their first product combines private key protection against cyber and physical threats with low latency execution, by safekeeping private keys and control code inside tamper-proof, programmable hardware security modules hosted in secure data centers, with encrypted backups in the cloud.
The investment will be used to develop new capabilities like smart accounts with programmable controls, support additional asset classes and expand its operations internationally. Trustology is currently onboarding selected beta clients.
Alex Batlin, the startup’s founder and CEO, formerly led blockchain innovation work at UBS and BNY Mellon and was a founding member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Trusted IoT Alliance, Utility Settlement Coin, and R3 consortium. Other founders include former executives from ADIA (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNY Mellon, Curve, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, RBS, Starling Bank, and UBS.
Matt Jacobus, Venture Partner at Two Sigma Ventures, said in a statement: “We believe that a hot-storage solution with strong security and programmable controls is necessary to develop a larger, institutional trading ecosystem around digital assets.”