Digital Asset Raises $355 Million to Expand Canton

Digital Asset, the creator of Canton, has announced a $355 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, a16z crypto, with participation from institutions across traditional and decentralised finance.

The firm says the funding will support its next phase of growth as more institutions bring assets, applications, and regulated workflows onto Canton, adding it plans to use the capital to expand offerings across the Canton ecosystem, deepen engagement with developers and financial institutions, and support continued network growth. It will focus on use cases where shared, privacy-enabled infrastructure can reduce friction and improve capital efficiency– including tokenisation, collateral mobility, settlement, payments, and other regulated financial workflows.

While much of the blockchain sector continues to search for durable real-world use cases, Digital Asset says it has designed Canton to address one of the central barriers to blockchain adoption in financial markets: enabling institutions to use shared infrastructure while preserving the privacy, compliance, control, and interoperability required in regulated finance.

The funding round also marks the start of a partnership between Digital Asset and a16z crypto, giving the former access to the latter’s crypto’s expertise across company building, crypto, policy, and research as Canton scales and the ecosystem expands.

“Blockchain adoption will be defined by practical, production-grade applications in the world’s largest markets,” observes Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset. “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.

“Canton was purpose-built for this, and Digital Asset is working with more than 700 ecosystem participants to make Canton the core infrastructure for global finance,” he adds. “This investment brings additional expertise, reach, and ecosystem support at an important moment for both Digital Asset and Canton’s growth.”

Ali Yahya, general partner at a16z crypto, adds, “One of the most compelling blockchain opportunities is no longer theoretical; it is emerging as real-world assets and institutional workflows move onchain, Digital Asset has built one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance. We believe that Digital Asset is building foundational infrastructure for the next generation of financial markets.”