Circle said the acquisition will accelerate its strategy of delivering a token marketplace that can let businesses and individuals in raising capital and can interact with investors using open crypto rails and infrastructure.
The transaction is subject to approval from the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York City, SeedInvest offers venture capital, angel investing and equity crowdfunding services to startup businesses and early-stage companies.
It claims to have a total user base of 240,895 and has funded more than 220 companies, with an average investment of $500,000.
Circle has a vision of developing an open, global and connected digital economy built on crypto assets and blockchain infrastructure. In order to realize such a vision, new ways of business are needed, where the businesses will use crypto assets to efficiently raise capital, manage investors and provide liquidity.
It also aims to increase the standard of the crypto industry by embracing securities regulation as it applies to crypto, to pave way for security tokens.
To execute this vision, legally compliant ways of using crypto assets and tokens is needed to raise capital and end-to-end services that can help startups and growth companies of all sizes to register, issue and distribute these tokenized assets to individual and institutional investors, Circle stated.
The acquisition could enable companies to raise capital through regulated platform, tap into diversified retail investor portfolios through Circle Invest and offer investors with secondary market liquidity on its digital asset exchange.
SeedInvest’s product has several end-to-end capabilities needed to execute regulated crowdfunding such as startup due diligence, securities issuance, investor accreditation, payments and securities custody.
The acquisition could support crypto-denominated investments including using fiat stablecoins such as USDC, along with the issuing and offering tokenized securities.
