Keyrock closes $72m Series B funding from Ripple, others

Keyrock, an international asset market maker, announced raising $72 million in a Series B funding round backed by a number of investors, including Ripple, SIX Fintech Ventures, and Middlegame Ventures.

In a statement, the company said it will use its funding to invest further into infrastructure development, scalability tools, as well as regulatory licensing across Europe, the US, and Singapore.

Co-founded by Kevin de Patoul, CEO, Jeremy de Groodt, CTO and Juan David Mendieta, CSO, Keyrock was started to create accessible and more efficient capital markets by deploying proprietary and highly scalable market making technologies.

“In the last five years we have focused strongly on doing things with a long-term perspective and haven’t taken any shortcuts. Due to this focus, we now have a highly robust foundation. The new round of funding allows us to expand on that and dramatically accelerate executing our vision to provide liquidity solutions for all digital assets. By doubling down on our focus on clients and scalability, we will be looking to expand into new markets with targeted services.” said Kevin de Patoul, CEO of Keyrock.

Since the launch of 2017, Keyrock has become a preferred global liquidity partner of over 85 trading venues both centralised and decentralised. In the past year, Keyrock has expanded into 200 unique new markets and has seen threefold growth in terms of trading volume while the overall market shrunk by 50%.

“Keyrock has provided scalable liquidity solutions to all kinds of stakeholders in the digital asset space, including Ripple. We have been partners for over three years and watched Keyrock’s global success. Under the leadership of Kevin, Jeremy and Juan, Keyrock has established themselves as a key player in the space by building scalable, enterprise grade solutions and taking a regulatory first approach. We look forward to continuing working alongside the team to help support their next stage of growth.” said Maxime Fages, Director of Institutional Markets at Ripple.

“We are proud to see how the Keyrock team advanced their business and successfully manoeuvred through very difficult market conditions. They showed incredible resilience and with the current founding round we believe Keyrock will establish itself as one of the top-tier liquidity solution providers for digital assets not only in Europe but globally.” said Andreas Iten, Head SIX Fintech Ventures and CEO of F10.

“We are delighted to continue to partner with Keyrock on its growth trajectory. Keyrock and its leadership team have proven to be incredibly effective and MiddleGame Ventures has no doubt they will continue growing and expanding with the array of solutions they have developed in the digital assets space.” said Pascal G. Bouvier, Managing Partner at MiddleGame Ventures.

Earlier this year, Keyrock doubled the size of the workforce globally to over 100 employees. They are looking to double this number again in the upcoming year despite a bear market and hiring freezes across the crypto space. Started in Brussels, Keyrock now has an office in the UK and is looking to expand to Switzerland and Singapore in early 2023.