$22.5M Seed Funding Announced by Web3 Infrastructure Firm Fortress Blockchain Technologies
Led by Ayon Capital, the Funding Enables Fortress to Build and Scale Its Financial, Regulatory and Technology Infrastructure for Web3 Innovators.
LAS VEGAS, Aug. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Fortress Blockchain Technologies today announced it has raised Seed funding of $22.5M led by Ayon Capital. The round also included Soaring Investment Management, Fortress’ founder Scott Purcell, and a few select super-angel investors. The capital supports Fortress’ team as it creates transformative B2B infrastructure for the Web3 industry.
With a team of 84 full-time product managers and software engineers, a key focus of this B2B FinTech/BlockTech infrastructure firm is the ongoing development of the Fortress technology initiatives for API-embeddable, user-friendly NFT and crypto wallets, API-driven and white-label minting engines for fungible and non-fungible tokens, and its proprietary core-system for financial and trust services.
In addition to engineering, Fortress has invested heavily in its regulatory initiatives. This has included hiring Albert Forkner, formerly the Banking Commissioner (WY) and Chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors as the CEO of the firms wholly-owned subsidiary, Fortress Trust, and his successfully guiding the firm to achieving trust charter and building a complete financial services stack including asset custody, payments, compliance, trustee, crypto liquidity and other utilities needed by Web3 innovators.
Now hitting the “go to market” phase of the startup lifecycle, the funding is being deployed to build a world class sales team. Ryan Miller, previously head of sales at the multi-billion-dollar FinTech MX Technologies, has joined Fortress as its Chief Revenue Officer and is now building a team of enterprise sales veterans across a variety of industry verticals.
“The tokenization of information and assets via fungible and non-fungible tokens will transform the world” noted Scott Purcell, founder and CEO of Fortress, “and we look forward to helping Web3 innovators of all types, from Fortune 500 brands to FinTechs to next-generation startups with the financial, regulatory and technology infrastructure they need to build incredible businesses.”
“With our extensive investments in the crypto ecosystem we see first-hand the transformative effect that the blockchain is having, and will continue to have on every facet of society” said Rahul Pagidipati of Ayon Capital “and as a fund, our singular thesis is to only back world-class founders who have the vision and ability to execute, we are excited to back Scott, Kevin, George and their team on this venture.”
“Technological and societal paradigm shifts are ushering in Web3. Fortress is one of the critical building blocks for this next wave of the web,” said Soaring Investment Management director, Frank Zhang. “Fortress is positioning itself as the infrastructure partner of choice for celebrities, corporate brands, crypto exchanges, NFT marketplaces, real estate professionals, neo-banks, FinTechs, healthcare firms and others entering the space with their Web3 initiatives.”
The funding will enable Fortress to continue to write software, begin to extend its regulatory services globally, and build the sales and operational teams to support a wide variety of B2B customers across numerous industries.
Fortress Blockchain Technologies is purpose-built to deliver financial, regulatory and technology infrastructure to the rapidly emerging Web3 space. The firm offers financial services including compliance, payments, custody, trustee-of-assets, escrow, crypto liquidity and other services, as well as a minting engine for fungible and non-fungible tokens along with an NFT and crypto wallet that is secure, user-friendly and can be embedded into third-party mobile and web applications. Fortress Trust Company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortress Blockchain Technologies and is a full-retail Nevada-chartered financial institution.
SOURCE Fortress Blockchain Technologies