Enterprise-grade institutional crypto operations platform Utila Inc. announced Tuesday that it has raised $11.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by NFX, Wing VC and Framework Ventures.

Founded in 2022, Utila’s platform assists institutions, trading firms and developers build platforms that deal with digital assets such as bitcoin and Ethereum and handle them using secure wallets. The platform also helps institutions deal with regulatory and privacy concerns that investors might have dealing with cryptocurrencies, especially with the rising fear of cybersecurity incidents.

In many cases, implementing and managing cryptocurrency wallets has been the domain of experts due to complex interfaces, poor developer offerings and lengthy implementations, the company said. As a result, Utila has offered its own management experience to clear away much of this for institutions.

Using its platform, customers receive an all-in-one experience designed with high security including multiparty computation key cryptography, which allows multiple parties to securely sign transactions, reducing the chances of fraud or security issues. The company also provides institutional customers the ability to connect traditional banking with decentralized finance, where cryptocurrency onboards into markets as well as centralized crypto exchanges.

“Switching to Utila from traditional custodial trust companies was a pivotal moment for 1Konto, addressing key challenges with an innovative and efficient solution,” said Edwin Handschuh, co-founder and chief executive of 1Konto Inc., a digital asset trading firm. “Our experience with Utila has been transformative; their platform’s seamless integration into our daily operations has not only been straightforward but also a delight, thanks to their intuitive UI/UX that significantly reduces the learning curve and allows for quicker settlements with clients.”

The company said that it has worked with numerous customers including hedge funds, over-the-counter trading desks, market makers and prime brokers. All of them have specific security and regulatory needs regarding their digital asset management that must be met with cryptocurrency infrastructure.

Another industry that Utila has begun to serve is token issuers as asset tokenization has become a hotter topic. Tokenization is when another asset, such as stocks, bonds or other securities can be represented by a crypto asset token on a blockchain network such as Ethereum, Algorand or Solana. These tokenized representations can then be bought, sold and traded and gain the benefits and risks of being represented and managed as crypto assets. To cover this emerging market segment, Utila said that it has built advanced tokenization capabilities into its platform.

Utila claims that it has facilitated more than $3 billion in transactions across its platform in the past six months for its customers.

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