Market making: Flowdesk raises $50 million in Series B funding

His CEO, Guilhem Chaumont, can be smiling. While 2023 has been a particularly complicated year for many crypto players, Flowdesk has more than survived. Over the last twelve months, the French crypto market maker has tripled its turnover. "We've had an exceptional year", it boasts. A year crowned by a new fundraising round (Series B) of $50 million.

As we revealed last July, Flowdesk, which had already raised $30 million in 2022 (Series A), had been working on this deal for months. It was led by the Cathay Innovation fund. Several other investors such as the Cathay Ledger, Eurazeo and Speedinvest funds also participated, as did the American company Ripple.

According to our information, Flowdesk is now valued at around $400 million. Given the buoyant environment and the interest of certain investors, the company is considering extending its Series B. When contacted, Flowdesk declined to comment.

Created in 2020, Flowdesk is a market maker and service provider for digital assets. Its role is to facilitate liquidity management on the markets. Except that instead of doing it on behalf of its customers, Flowdesk just provides them with the infrastructure and lets them manage their operations themselves. "We created the principle of Market Making as a Service (MMaaS), and that's what allows us to be cheaper than the competition," explains Guilhem Chaumont.

Thanks to its solution, the Paris-based start-up has quickly made a name for itself alongside the leaders in "traditional" crypto market making such as GSR or Wintermute.

Alongside this, Flowdesk, which has been registered as a digital asset service provider (PSAN) by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) since 2021, has developed other services such as asset custody, cash management and even token trading.

With this new money, Flowdesk aims to expand its range of products and services in market making and OTC (over-the-counter) trading, recruit new profiles and develop in Asia and the United States with the opening of new offices. The company already has offices in Paris, Singapore and New York.