A research company Elliptic raises $23M from SBI Holdings

Elliptic, a company specializing in tracking transactions on public blockchains, raised $23 million during Series B financing round, and the Japanese corporation SBI Holdings has become the largest investor.

AlbionVC, SignalFire, Octopus Ventures and Santander Innoventures also participated in the financing round.

Elliptic intends to gain a foothold in the Asian markets. The company has already opened an office in Singapore and announced the plans to open another one in Japan. Notably, representatives of SBI Holdings and AlbionVC will become members of the board of directors.

Elliptic founder and CEO James Smith explained that they were attracted by friendly regulatory approach established licensing procedures. The company intends to gain a foothold in Japan, and then proceed with the expansion in Asia.

"This new investment will allow us to double down on our mission to enable the crypto industry to grow and take shape. We are delighted and extremely proud to have the backing of SBI Group, who will play a key role in our expansion to Asia and will support our teams in Singapore and Japan. Their involvement demonstrates not only how far the crypto world has come, but also the critical role Elliptic plays in enabling the banking adoption of crypto-assets," James Smith said.

He emphasized that SBI Holdings will integrate its AI-based and machine learning products developed by Elliptic both into its exchange business (VCTrade) and in custodial services. In addition, SBI Holdings (a major holder of XRP) believes that the company is best suited for tracking transactions on the Ripple network.

Also, Elliptic is engaged in developing monitoring services for Facebook's Libra and Central Bank's Digital Currencies (CBDC).

It is also worth noting that the company raised $12 million within five years during seed rounds and Series A round.

According to Forbes analysts, the main competitor of Elliptic - startup Chainalysis - could become the next "unicorn." By now the comoany has already raised $53 million.