J.P. Morgan Backs $20M Round for Blockchain Infrastructure Startup Ownera

Ownera, a startup building infrastructure to connect the tokenized asset networks of the traditional finance world, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round from backers that included banking giant J.P. Morgan and and private asset management firm LRC Group.

Ownera wants to connect the tokenized platforms and trading interfaces being launched by traditional finance companies. The platform is based on the open-source FINP2P protocol and supports any type of securities tokenization engine on any public or private blockchain plus traditional ledgers. Clients have access to a unified digital securities wallet that allows the user to invest, trade, lend and borrow against the connected tokenized assets.

J.P. Morgan was among the first wave of big banks to move into the crypto space last year. The firm offered institutional clients access to bitcoin through two different funds custodied by NYDIG that have raised a combined total of nearly $45 million. The Ownera funding signals that TradFi hasn’t abandoned blockchain technology during the bear market.

“It is commonly accepted that the tokenization of securities has the capacity to digitize markets with total value in the trillions of dollars,” said Ownera co-founder and CEO Ami Ben-David in the press release. “Dozens of platforms are being deployed by financial institutions across the market, and our job is to be the neutral layer, seamlessly interconnecting them into one global distribution and liquidity network, using open-source network specifications.”

The funding round comes with two new board members: J.P. Morgan’s Scott Lucas, head of markets DLT, and LRC group chairman Nadav Zohar.

Other investors in the round were Draper Goren Holm, tokentus Investment AG, Accomplice Blockchain, Polymorphic Capital, The Ropart Group and Archax.

Read more: How Are Institutions and Companies Investing in Crypto?

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