Edward Woodford, founder and CEO of Crypto Infrastructure Firm Zerohash.
Courtesy: Zerohash
Crypto Infrastructure Startup Zerohash has raised $144 million with support from financial companies including Morgan Stanley and Sofi.
The Series D round is led by global automated trading company Interactive Brokers, and includes Zero Hash’s clients who also spoke to founder and CEO Edward Woodford in an interview. The company is valued at $1 billion, he said.
“We wanted to grow up from the world’s largest and most trusted brand, and that’s what bridges this new technology,” he said.
According to Zerohash, funds managed by Apollo also took part in the round.
Startups are one of a wave of publicly traded and privately held companies, taking advantage of a more lucrative regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies under President Donald Trump.
After Trump took office this year, the government has turned its way from accepting it as a new technology, being so skeptical of crypto under former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler.
Suddenly, CEOs of financial companies, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, had expressed confidence that they would be involved. Sofi CEO Anthony Noto told CNBC in April that he was ready to regain crypto transactions after a shift in regulations.
Founded in 2017, Zerohash offers the ability to offer banks and fintech companies blockchain-based products in three major areas, according to Woodford.
“Some of this salary increases are clearly accelerating. [adoption] across these three verticals, with a variety of clients who are also investors,” he said.
Interactive brokers already use Zerohash for crypto transactions and custody, and will launch Stablecoin products with the company, Woodford said.
Woodford said he could not comment on whether Morgan Stanley and Sophie were also clients, but he suggested that the announcement would come. A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley and Sofi declined to comment.
“These groups are not VCs,” Woodford said. “We can assume that there is clearly some announcements coming in the future along with these other investors.”
