Harbor, a blockchain technology developer for the private securities industry, has picked up $28m in its latest investment round, just months after its previous round.
Founders Fund led the round with contributions also coming from new investors Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, Future Perfect Ventures, 1confirmation, Abstract Ventures, and Signia Venture Partners. Existing backers Craft Ventures, Vy Capital and Valor Equity Partners also participated.
Berggruen Holdings’ Nicolas Berggruen, Founders Fund’s Napoleon Ta and Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain were some of the individual backers to take part in the round.
Harbor is looking to evolve the private securities sector through blockchain technology by bringing in tokenised securities that are backed by real-world assets like real estate, company equity, investment funds and fine art. The technology will help to unlock liquidity for traditionally illiquid assets and uses a fully compliant protocol to meet laws around the world.
The company will launch its first platform for issuers of securities and broker-dealers, Regulated Token (R-Token), in the Summer of this year.
This project is a is an open source standard that applies regulatory compliance at the token level. The token embeds rules to ensure only eligible investors can trade the token. Issuers, broker dealers, underwriters, and/or regulatory bodies can implement the R-Token standard to meet jurisdictional securities regulations, know your customer (KYC) policies, anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, tax considerations, and more.
The R-Token standard is a system of ERC-20 smart contracts built on the Ethereum blockchain and compatible with the ERC-20 ecosystem.
Harbor CEO Joshua Stein said, “Tokenizing private securities allows issuers to lock up capital, without locking up investors. The prospect of greatly increased liquidity for private securities will enhance capital formation, create new investment opportunities and support economic growth. Harbor is the enabling technology platform for securities issuers and broker-dealers to compliantly tokenize private securities.”
Following this latest investment, Harbor has raised a total of $40m. The company closed a $10m funding round earlier in the year, led by Vy Capital, Fifth Wall Ventures and Valor Equity Partners.
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