Canton Developer Raises $355M in Round Led by A16z

Digital Asset (@digitalasset), the company behind the Canton Network (@CantonNetwork), has closed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, valuing the firm at roughly $2 billion. The round, announced June 11, was oversubscribed against a reported target of $300 million.

The headline number is big, but the investor list is the real story. It reads like a Wall Street directory, with HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, S&P Global, Tradeweb, and more than 20 other institutions backing a blockchain that’s built for regulated finance.

Who Backed the Round?

a16z crypto, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz, led the round. The full participant list spans banks, exchanges, asset managers, market makers, and crypto-native funds:

• Banks and finance: HSBC, BNP Paribas, ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, William Blair, SoFi, Hanwha Investment & Securities, SBI Group
• Trading and market infrastructure: Citadel Securities, Optiver, Tradeweb, CME Ventures, Broadridge, S&P Global, iCapital
• Sovereign and venture capital: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (through a wholly owned subsidiary), 7RIDGE, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, Liberty City Ventures, Alumni Ventures, R136 Ventures, Smash Capital, Greenwulf Asset Management

Many of these names are not just investors. Broadridge already runs more than $8 trillion in monthly repo volume on Canton infrastructure, and several other participants are active builders on the network.

One detail sets this raise apart from typical crypto funding rounds: investors received equity, not token allocations. Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz (@YuvalRooz) said the capital gives the company freedom to pursue acquisitions and partnerships while avoiding the circular capital commitments common in crypto, where companies pledge money into their backers' funds.

What Will the Money Fund?

Digital Asset says the funds will accelerate Canton's role as onchain infrastructure for regulated capital markets. Priorities include expanding the ecosystem of assets, applications, and participants; deepening institutional engagement; and enabling strategic moves such as partnerships and M&A. Focus areas include tokenization, collateral mobility, settlement, payments, and privacy-preserving regulated workflows.

"For capital markets to move onchain, institutions need infrastructure that reflects how they actually operate, with privacy, compliance, scale, and interoperability built in from the start," said Rooz. He added that the company works with more than 700 ecosystem participants to make Canton "the core infrastructure for global finance."

Ali Yahya (@alive_), a general partner at a16z crypto, said the opportunity is no longer theoretical. "Digital Asset has built one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance," he said.

Why Are Institutions Choosing Canton?

Canton is a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for institutional finance. Its core differentiator is sub-transaction privacy with composability, meaning institutions can share the same infrastructure while keeping sensitive data private and compliant. That design solves a problem that fully transparent public chains cannot: banks and trading firms need confidentiality to operate.

The approach has critics in crypto circles who view institutional-grade controls as a departure from open blockchain principles. But the traction is hard to argue with. Visa joined Canton as a Super Validator in March 2026 and later added the network to its stablecoin settlement pilot. Major institutions, including Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, and Deutsche Börse, have also piloted the network.

The raise also caps a steep funding climb. Digital Asset, founded in 2014, raised $135 million in June 2025 and another $50 million in December 2025 from backers including BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, and iCapital. Going from those rounds to $355 million at a $2 billion valuation in under a year signals how quickly institutional appetite has hardened.

From Pilots to Production

On X, Rooz posted a reflective note tying the raise to the company’s long journey. Almost 12 years ago, he left @DRWTrading with @wesarn_real (with @ShaulKfir joining shortly after) to build what would become Digital Asset, an asset-agnostic global settlement system. He openly acknowledged the setbacks along the way: “We failed. We made bad decisions.” But the focus on institutional adoption as the path forward eventually led to the launch of Canton Network. Rooz highlighted that @a16zcrypto is leading the round, joined by major institutions including @ABNAMRO, @apolloglobal, @CMEVentures, @cbventures, @BNPParibasCIB, @sbigroup, @Broadridge, @HSBC, @SPGlobal, among others. 
On a personal note, he said having a16z lead the round carries special weight because Ben Horowitz’s (@bhorowitz) book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” was one he repeatedly turned to during the difficult stretches.

The patience Rooz described is finally compounding, and the next chapter starts with $355 million in funding and Wall Street already in the room. 

Sources:

• PR Newswire Official press release announcing the $355 million round, investor list and executive quotes 
• Digital Asset Blog Company announcement detailing funding purpose and Canton ecosystem growth
• CryptoRank Reporting on the equity structure, Rooz's comments on M&A plans, and Digital Asset's funding history