The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | May 16th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Digital assets score again

💸 Elwood Technologies, the institutional-grade digital asset platform founded by British hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard, secured a $70 million funding round joined by the likes of Barclays and Goldman Sachs. The round also saw the participation of Europe’s largest B2B investor Dawn Capital, BlockFi Ventures, Chimera Ventures, CommerzVentures, Digital Currency Group, Flow Traders and Galaxy Digital Ventures. Elwood’s platform provides low-latency connectivity to global crypto exchanges and deep liquidity via one single API. The company announced it will use the money injection to enhance its offerings and broaden market adoption.

👀 Digital asset risk surveillance firm Solidus Lab founded by ex-Goldman Sachs engineers, has secured a $45 million Series B round led by Liberty City Ventures and joined by Evolution Equity Partners, Declaration Partners, and others. Solidus’ client base includes top crypto firms as well as traditional financial institutions and regulatory agencies. The funding announcement comes on the backdrop of record-breaking crypto and DeFi adoption and just a couple of months after Solidus unveiled its all-in-one crypto-native risk monitoring suite, Halo, which is currently monitoring more than one trillion trading events per day in more than 150 markets.

The rise of the Cloud continues…

🧨 The global Cloud computing market size was estimated at $ 380.25 billion in 2021 but it is expected to witness significant growth in the near future. According to Precedence Research, the market size is projected to hit around  $ 1,614.10 billion by 2030 and witness strong growth at a CAGR of 17.43% from 2022 to 2030. The recently published report shows that, by service, the Software as a Service (SaaS) segment constituted around 55% of the revenue in 2021, while by end-user, the BFSI was the leading segment with 25% of the global cloud computing market share in 2021. North America led the global cloud computing market with 40% of the revenue in 2021.

☁️ Banco Santander has migrated 80% of its IT infrastructure to the Cloud, using in-house-developed software, as it aims to become cloud-native.In the past 12 months, the Spanish bank has accelerated its migration to the Cloud. Just over a year ago, the bank had 60% of its IT infrastructure in the Cloud, and set 2023 as the target to have 100% of its infrastructure cloud-based. The company says it is one of the first major banks in the world to digitise its core banking, using the Gravity bespoke software and tapping into a team of 16,500 software developers and engineers.

Where is the buzz

London-based payments solutions provider Checkout.com is set to acquire French ID verification start-up ubble for an undisclosed sum. Checkout.com says the deal, set to close later this year, will help build out its financial product offering, enabling e-commerce merchants to verify customers and capitalise on the expanding digital economy. The addition of ubble’s ID verification capabilities will enable fintechs and merchants to remain compliant with local regulations and future-proof their operations ahead of potential changes to EU and global regulations.