New York-based Capital markets fintech Clear Street has secured $165 million in Series B financing and earned the unicorn status. The round was led by private equity firm Prysm Capital. It was the fintech’s first venture capital raising since its inception four years ago, giving it a valuation of $1.7 billion. Other investors include NextGen Venture Partners, Walleye Capital, Belvedere and McLaren Strategic Ventures, and various angel investors.
Since the beginning of 2021, Clear Street has seen a 220% increase in funding balances and a more than 500% increase in equity transactions. Today, the company handles a daily trading volume of more than 3 billion US dollars. In addition, the company has broadly expanded its leadership team and now has nearly 100 engineers working in product development and customer needs.
Clear Street says the cash injection will help the company expand its capabilities to serve fintechs, market makers, and professional traders after launching a prime brokerage platform for institutional investors.
Chris Pento, co-founder and CEO of Clear Street, says: “We founded Clear Street to replace the outdated technical infrastructure used in the capital markets. It shouldn’t take six months to open an account or a year to start trading a new asset class. Customers demand better technology and better service. Clear Street tackles this problem head-on. Our cloud-native platform provides the services and data investors need to compete in today’s markets.”
Co-founder and CTO Sachin Kumar continues: “We started with Prime Brokerage, an area where we experienced first-hand the frustrations created by outdated technology. When we built Prime Services, we found that 80-90% of the infrastructure used to serve Prime brokerage clients is the same infrastructure used by other market participants, such as fintech app developers or market makers. We have focused heavily on developing API-first platforms, such as clearing, settlement and custody, so that we can scale to other parts of the market.” A time of growth for Clear Street The conclusion of the Series B round is the culmination of an impressive 18-month development of the New York-based company.
Clear Street has vowed to further expand its teams and resources due to this latest $165 million investment. Matt RobertsNew, co-founder and partner at Prysm Capital, says: “Capital markets lag in innovation and often rely on outdated technologies that make access to markets difficult and expensive. Led by Chris and Sachin, Clear Street has built a state-of-the-art platform that competes with the established players on the street. We are proud to be working with the team to expand their offering and improve access to public markets.”
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