Symbiont

About Symbiont

Symbiont positions itself as a specialized financial technology firm, focusing on the application of blockchain and smart contract technologies to overhaul capital markets infrastructure. Established in 2013, the company emerged from the merger of MathMoney f(x), founded by Mark Smith, and Counterparty, a project developed by Adam Krellenstein, Robby Dermody, and Evan Wagner. This union brought together expertise in FinTech and pioneering work in blockchain protocols. Mark Smith, a serial entrepreneur with a history of founding and exiting FinTech companies, was motivated by the 2008 financial crisis to seek technologies that could introduce greater transparency and decentralization to the markets. His background in electronic trading systems and capital markets complements the technical acumen of the Counterparty founders, who were early innovators in using the Bitcoin blockchain for more than just currency transactions.

The company's core offering is the Assembly™ platform, an enterprise blockchain solution engineered for financial institutions. Assembly utilizes a proprietary smart contract language called SymPL™ to model and automate complex, multi-party financial workflows. The platform is designed to create a single, unalterable record of transactions, which aims to eliminate manual data reconciliation and enhance operational efficiency. A key architectural feature is its approach to privacy; it employs end-to-end encryption to ensure that only authorized parties can view transaction details, without relying on a central authority for validation. This allows clients to build and operate on a shared infrastructure while maintaining control over their data.

Symbiont's business model is centered on providing its Assembly platform to large financial services firms, enabling them to develop and deploy decentralized applications for various use cases. The company targets institutional clients such as banks, asset managers, and market infrastructure providers. It generates revenue by licensing its platform and working with partners to build solutions for specific verticals, including syndicated loans, private equity, mortgages, and data management. Symbiont has attracted significant strategic investment and partnerships from major industry players. A notable milestone was its Series B funding round in 2019, which raised $20 million and was led by Nasdaq Ventures, with participation from firms like Citi and Galaxy Digital. This funding has been directed towards platform development and expanding deployments. The partnership with Nasdaq also includes the integration of Assembly into the Nasdaq Financial Framework, aiming to offer tokenization and smart contract solutions to a global network of marketplaces. Other key collaborations include projects with Vanguard to digitize currency forwards and streamline index data management, and a pilot with SWIFT to improve corporate actions workflows.