Abu Dhabi’s Sovereign wealth fund ADQ has invested $5 million in the hybrid crypto exchange GRVT. According to a report by The Block, The ZKsync-backed hybrid cryptocurrency exchange GRVT has raised $5 million in a strategic fundraising round led by Further Ventures, a venture capital firm supported by ADQ, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.
According to the report, the equity structure was selected with Further Ventures in order to preserve the GRVT token for the community while allowing the holding company to grow into other business sectors in the future.
GRVT’s Funding Comes As Stock Investment
According to The Block report, Hong Yea, the CEO and co-founder of GRVT, said that the investment round, which began in October of last year and ended in December, was set up as stock.
Token warrants were a part of GRVT’s previous pre-seed and seed rounds.
With the strategic investment round, GRVT now has $14.3 million in total cash, which includes $7.1 million from pre-seed and seed rounds as well as a $2.2 million private token sale in March 2024, according to Yea.
Additionally, the investment in GRVT by Further Ventures comes soon after the company led a $16 million fundraising round for Dfns, a company that develops crypto wallet technology and whose technologies GRVT uses.
Further Ventures’ website lists further cryptocurrency investments including blockchain infrastructure platform Fuze, cryptocurrency custodian Tungsten, cryptocurrency derivatives platform Kemet Trading, and staking services provider like Twinstake.
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What Will The Funding Be Used For?
This year, GRVT intends to enter the cryptocurrency spot and options trading market with new capital secured. According to the report, the company also intends to upgrade its “modified” Class M Bermuda crypto business license to a full Class F license and seek regulatory approvals in other jurisdictions, such as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) license, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority license, and Abu Dhabi Global Market’s (ADGM) capital markets license.
GRVT’s Previous Fund Raise
Today’s funding comes at a time when GRVT has previously undertaken a pre-seed and seed funding which was worth $7.1 million.
Matrix Partners and Delphi Digital co-led about $5 million in the seed round. Additionally, Susquehanna Investment Group, CMS Holdings, ABCDE, Hack VC, and Matter Labs (creators of the Ethereum scaling network zkSync) were among the other investors in the round.
500 Startups and Folius Ventures were among the investors who supported the $2.1 million pre-seed round.
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