Citi Ventures, Citigroup’s first venture capital investing group, and Accel, have co-led a $6 million initial capital financing round for xalts, a Hong Kong based digital asset management firm. This marks Citi Ventures’ first seed investment in a crypto firm.
The digital asset management firm was co-founded by a former trader at HSBC Holdings, Ashutosh Goel, and a former executive at Meta, Supreet Kaur, who are chief investment officer and chief operating officer respectively.
“With xalts, we are building innovative, institutional-grade investment products and solutions which focus on high compliance and control standards - things institutional investors care about," said Goel. "The next leg of growth in digital assets will be driven by institutional participation in the asset class. We are starting to see the early signs of that with a lot of new initiatives coming from banks and asset managers."
Citi Ventures managing director, Luis Valdich, added: "xalts is our first investment in a digital asset manager, and we support its vision of creating innovative products to meet the growing appetite of institutional investors for more efficient and robust crypto-access investments.” Citi Ventures has not disclosed the amount they invested.
xalts has multiple digital asset related products, including mutual funds and exchange traded funds. Their development pipeline includes collaborations with other asset management firms.
Accel has previously invested in firms such as Facebook and Spotify. Other investors include Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and hedge fund managers.