Lamine Brahimi, Dr Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Oren-Olivier Puder, Sebastien Dessimoz (L-R)/Taurus.
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Credit Suisse leads $65m Series B for crypto-infrastructure firm Taurus
The platform’s clients Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet and Arab Bank Switzerland all took part in the round.
Digital asset infrastructure firm Taurus has raised $65m in a Series B round led by Credit Suisse.
The funds will be used to support the Swiss company’s growth through hiring “top engineering talent” and setting up new offices across Europe, UAE and, “soon after”, the Americas and South-East Asia to get closer to its clients.
New investors including Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group and Cedar Muni Ventures joined existing backers Arab Bank Switzerland and stock-listed real-estate group Inventis in the round.
“We are proud to welcome such high-profile investors and benefit from their expertise to further develop one of the richest platforms in the industry, covering any type of digital assets, way beyond cryptocurrencies,” Taurus co-founder and managing partner Lamine Brahimi said.
Brahimi co-founded the firm alongside Dr Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Oren-Olivier Puder and Sebastien Dessimoz in 2018, and they remain majority shareholders following the raise.
According to the company, it has a more than 60 per cent market share in Switzerland, providing digital asset infrastructure to issue, custody and trade “any digital assets” including staking, tokenised assets and digital currencies.
“Our team is the only one to have built an end-to-end infrastructure while controlling the full technology stack including blockchain-specific protocols, as well as HSM [hardware security modules] and MPC [multi-party computation] technologies,” Aumasson said.
“This strategic advantage allows Taurus to execute faster than others, without the dependency and risk associated with third-party providers.”
Taurus currently works with more than 25 financial institutions and corporate clients across eight countries, including investors Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet and Arab Bank Switzerland.
“The strategic partnership with Taurus is a cornerstone of the Swiss Bank division’s digital assets strategy with the ambition to become the leading Swiss bank in that space,” Credit Suisse Switzerland CEO André Helfenstein.
“We continue to embrace new and innovative technologies and expect to soon launch several digital asset services for clients both on the issuing and the investment side.”
