Flowdesk announced that it has raised $30 million from leading investors such as Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures, ISAI, Speedinvest, Fabric.vc, Ledger, and Coinbase, and 20 well-known business angels, including Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Nicolas Julia (Sorare), Pascal Gauthier (Ledger) and Sébastien Borget (The Sandbox).
Founded in 2020, Flowdesk markets a crypto-asset trading solution and market-making services for web3 players, including cryptocurrency token issuers, and currently employs 35 people.
Flowdesk was the first player offering crypto market-making activities to register with the AMF, the French financial markets authority. A status introduced by the PACTE law in 2019 and imposing, in particular, compliance with strict anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) rules.
The startup is part of a market that is growing exponentially, with more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies listed in 2022, compared to only a few dozen in 2013. Its clients include more than 50 cryptocurrency token issuers, companies and investment funds.
PARIS, June 27, 2022 – A trading infrastructure made in France
Active in the cryptocurrency sector for several years, the four co-founders of Flowdesk, Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau and Balthazar Giraux have been working in this sector since 2017 after careers in banking, algorithmic trading, engineering and entrepreneurship. During their respective experiences, they were marked by the siloing and fracturing of marketplaces and the technological barrier to properly handle the liquidity of crypto-asset projects. In 2020 they chose to develop an infrastructure that would allow them to interconnect and trade on these exchanges, while guaranteeing the redundancy and scalability needed to support the growing number of crypto projects.
An innovative product: Market-Making-as-a-Service (MMaaS)
Flowdesk is thus the originator of a trading infrastructure that allows interconnection with more than 60 cryptocurrency exchange platforms. A technology that its teams use on behalf of Flowdesk as well as for their clients and which allows them to offer four types of services:
Asset management
Brokerage
Custody
Market-making
Market-making is Flowdesk’s flagship service and its most differentiating product. It addresses the needs of the majority of the 10,000 cryptocurrency issuers with significant liquidity issues. By making its technology and traders available to these players, Flowdesk allows them to manage their cryptocurrency token liquidity themselves with their own funds. The service is called Market-Making-as-a-Service in reference to digital models based on simply providing technology to customers who commit their own resources.
A decisive fund-raising to change scale
Although Flowdesk’s team consisted only of its four co-founders at the beginning of 2021, the company now employs 35 people and plans to recruit to reach 100 employees before the end of 2022. A change of scale for which fundraising was necessary. Flowdesk is indeed facing an extremely strong demand in market-making and after having opened offices in Singapore in March 2022, is now targeting the United States to deploy sales and trading teams as well as legal compliance specialists, a particularly strategic topic for the company and its constantly changing regulatory market.
For Guilhem Chaumont, co-founder and CEO of Flowdesk: “This fundraising is a key step that will allow us to accelerate at all levels to meet the growing demand in Europe, Asia and North America. It will also give us the means to develop our technological infrastructure to meet the new needs that will emerge in market making. Our vision is that within 10 years a large proportion of assets will be tokenized using blockchain technology, which will require a rethinking of financial services with a more scalable and counterparty agnostic approach. We will have to scale up quickly to integrate this new financial situation.”
For Thomas Turelier, Vice President at Eurazeo: “An increasing number of companies are issuing tokens and are thus confronted with the complexity of managing a liquid asset in different markets. Most of these companies do not, however, see themselves as financial market professionals: they are technology providers, game developers… A financial infrastructure such as the one proposed by Flowdesk is therefore crucial to allow all these web3 players to develop with the least possible friction while trusting a regulated player aligned with its customers in terms of financial interests.”
For Cyril Guenoun, Partner at Aglaé Ventures: “We were convinced by Flowdesk’s positioning as a technology provider for cryptocurrency issuers. This emerging and fast-growing market needs scalable tools to ensure secure and sustainable development. The team has proven the robustness of its solution as well as a business model adapted to its customers. With an already international presence and strong speed of execution, Flowdesk has the means to drive the growth of financial services for cryptocurrencies.”
Innovating to empower customers
Another ambition of this fundraising is to continue to invest in innovation with the aim of developing a complete platform for Flowdesk’s clients, allowing them to carry out the simplest to the most complex trading operations themselves. A model that will contribute to Flowdesk’s position as a leader in Market-Making-as-a-Service.
About Flowdesk
Founded in 2020 by Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau and Balthazar Giraux, Flowdesk is a digital asset service provider registered in France with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). Flowdesk is the originator of a trading infrastructure that allows interconnection with more than 60 cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The company offers four types of services: asset management, brokerage, custody and market-making.
The company has offices in Paris and Singapore.
More information on: Flowdesk
About Eurazeo
Eurazeo is a leading global investment group with more than €32bn under management and one of the most active tech investors in Europe. The group has backed ambitious entrepreneurs from Seed up to pre-IPO with investments in Onfido, Tink, Criteo, Talend, Swile, Mano Mano, Wefox, BackMarket, Payfit, Alma, GitGuardian, Doctolib, Contentsquare, Dataiku, Qonto and many more
About Aglae
Aglaé Ventures, the “tech” investment vehicle of Groupe Arnault, invests between €100k and €100m in fast-growing technology companies. Present in France and the United States, Aglaé Ventures focuses on SaaS software, marketplaces and content platforms. Companies supported by Aglaé Ventures include Airbnb, Algolia, Backmarket, Databricks, Lyft, Meero, Riskified, Slack and Spotify.
About ISAI
Launched in 2010, ISAI is the Tech Entrepreneurs’ Fund and brings together a community of over 350 entrepreneurs around the world. ISAI invests in differentiated projects ran by ambitious teams that it selects rigorously and actively supports. ISAI Gestion, with over €500 million under management, aims to finance and support high potential Tech companies, at the seed/post-seed stage or when they have already reached the break-even stage (Tech Growth/LBO).