SBI Ventures Singapore, a corporate venturing subsidiary of Japan-based financial services firm SBI Group, has partnered Switzerland-based digital asset bank Sygnum on Tuesday to launch an early-stage venture fund.
The fund will invest in digital asset opportunities, such as financial market infrastructure for distributed ledger technology (DLT) and enterprise services, across Southeast Asia and Europe.
Ryosuke Hayashi, managing director and CEO of SBI Ven Capital, SBI’s $4bn corporate venturing group, said: “DLT has the potential to transform financial infrastructure and spearhead financial inclusion.
“The SBI Group is committed to being at the forefront of this transformation by actively driving the growth of startups within this space through our broad ecosystem of group and investee companies as well as institutional partners.”
The structure of the fund is set to be tokenised to increase accessibility and potentially provide more liquidity for backers once they have invested.
Fabian Dori, Sygnum’s head of asset management, said: “We will also pursue opportunities to distribute this fund offering in Switzerland through Sygnum Bank AG [its local operation].”
Photo of Ryosuke Hayashi courtesy of LinkedIn.
