Asset tokenization startup Upvest raises $7.8M

Asset tokenization Startup Upvest, a Germany-based helps companies tokenize financial assets on the blockchain, has raised €7 million (~$7.8 million) in Series A funding.

The round was led by London-based venture capital firm Notion Capital, with participation from Partech Ventures and Holtzbrinck Ventures, according to a statement shared with TheCoinrise on Thursday.

With the fresh capital in place, Upvest plans to expand its platform or blockchain API (application programming interface) to help companies to tokenize financial assets such as real estate and private equity. “Our easy usable APIs foster the adoption of decentralized ledgers and create a more inclusive financial ecosystem,” said Martin Kassing, founder and CEO of Upvest.

The firm said its API Asset tokenization is already used by companies from over eighty countries, including Germany-based real estate crowdfunding platform Exporo and blockchain banking service Bitwala. “With Upvest Asset tokenization we save 85% in custodial and security issuance costs,” said Simon Brunke, CEO of Exporo.

On leading the investment round, Notion Capital’s general partner Patrick Norris said the venture firm expects blockchain to be “extremely disruptive” to the financial services industry.

Jan Miczaika, the partner at Holtzbrinck Ventures, added: “We were impressed by Upvest’s drive to find a real-world and repeatable use case for the blockchain. It is one of the few companies in the space that has real revenues and a clear ROI [return on investment] for its customers.”

We have reached out to Upvest for further comments and will update this story if we hear back.

Founded in 2018, Upvest currently employs 20 people, and aims to help tokenize “the €10 trillion” alternative investments asset class. “As of now, fintechs are forced to ask for high minimum investments, due to high issuance, distribution and storage costs. This prevents investment platforms from offering this great asset class to the masses,” it said.

Upvest claims to have processed €50 million (~$55.6 million) in volume via its APIs to date.