Nasdaq, the second largest stock exchange in the world, has participated in the Series B funding of the startup Symbiont, Forbes reports.

Symbiont is a blockchain-powered startup that produces a smart contracts platform for institutional applications.

Symbiont is proud to announce the closing of our $20M Series B funding round led by @Nasdaq Ventures with participation from additional new investors including Galaxy Digital @novogratz, @Citi, @RaptorGroup, and others. @Bloomberg: https://t.co/dD0qDC9dJg #blockchain #FinTech — Symbiont (@SymbiontIO) January 23, 2019

The startup managed to successfully close the $20 million funding series, which also saw Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, Raptor Group and Citi Ventures take part in the fundraising campaign. This is the first time that all four investment firms have invested in Symbiont.

Mark Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Symbiont said:

“Closing this round of funding enables us to accelerate investments in our platform and team”

In 2017, the startup closed Series A funding worth around $15 million. Investment funds such as Wicklow Capital, SenaHill Partners, Fenbushi Capital, and Medici Ventures took part in the funding campaign.

The Symbiont investment marks the largest single investment Nasdaq has made in the blockchain industry so far. It perfectly shows how quickly times change as instead of seeing blockchain and crypto industry as a threat, the second-largest stock exchange operator actually looks to capitalize on the emerging technology.

As a part of the investment, Nasdaq is also announcing a commercial integration that would result in the company moving into new areas, Forbes reports.

Gary Offner, Head of Nasdaq Ventures said:

“We are committed to discovering and investing in innovative technologies to help build our future market infrastructure used by more than 100 marketplaces around the world”

Offner also adds that the investment will include the integration of Symbiont’s enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform into the Nasdaq Financial Framework.

A couple of years ago, it was reported that Nasdaq, Citi, and Visa invested in Chain.com, a blockchain-based developer platform that serves an enterprise market. Nasdaq’s involvement resulted in testing a pilot for trading shares in private companies using distributed ledger technology.

It would be interesting to see what kind of impact Nasdaq’s involvement in Symbiont will have on Chain.com since these two are seen as potential competitors.

Materials provided by Precondo