Obligate, formerly known as FQX, announced it has successfully closed a seed extension funding round, allowing them to scale their blockchain-based platform for bonds and commercial paper.

Blockchange Ventures and Circle Ventures join initial seed co-investors Earlybird and SIX Fintech Ventures – bringing the total seed raise to more than $8.5 million.

With the Obligate platform, companies can issue on-chain bonds and commercial paper to obtain funding from a diverse range of investors. This comes at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional offerings but with the same regulatory certainty, as the instruments are globally enforceable, regulated debt securities. At the same time, investors get access to a wide range of regulated digital debt assets which can be secured with on-chain collateral. Utilizing smart contracts and tokenization in place of intermediaries such as paying and issuer agents, Obligate is able to reduce the costs associated with a bond issuance by 80% and reduce the time needed for an issuance from weeks to hours.

Building on their existing blockchain-based debt infrastructure, Obligate will launch its blockchain-based platform in Q1 2023 and enable end-to-end corporate debt funding in a decentralized and regulated environment.

Wyatt Lonergan of Circle Ventures shares: “Obligate is bringing new innovation to help bridge the worlds of traditional finance and DeFi. Through their platform, Obligate is adding utility and a compliant regulatory framework to the emerging real-world asset (RWA) DeFi market. We are excited to back the Obligate team as they prepare for their upcoming platform launch.”

Benedikt Schuppli, Obligate’s Co-Founder & CEO comments: “This backing from leading TradFi and Web3 institutions proves the value of applying blockchain technology to traditional financial instruments. This investment enables us to build a more accessible and efficient financial system where borrowers and investors are directly connected. ”
 

Dr. Stephan Meyer, Co-Founder and Chief Legal Officer at Obligate, states: “Obligate is an all-in-one bond and commercial paper platform, powered by full automation of the transaction life cycles and a public blockchain. We make bond issuances simple, flexible, and cost-efficient atop a solid legal and regulatory foundation.”

"Like the internet before it, we expect the blockchain will underpin some of the largest businesses out there, including in finance," said Ken Seiff, Managing Partner at Blockchange Ventures. "Obligate's vision of using the efficiency and speed of Blockchain embedded in a structure that still supports the core needs and requirements of existing debt markets is powerful. It takes a team with this combination of background and depth of experience to make this happen."

The Obligate platform will launch in February 2023 on the public blockchain Polygon.