Utila, an institutional digital assets operations platform, has just raised $18m in Series A funding. In conjunction with the announcement, Bentzi Rabi, CEO and co-founder, replied to our questions about the company, the product, the round, and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hi Bentzi, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What’s your background?
Sure, I’m Bentzi Rabi, CEO and co-founder of Utila, where we’re focused on enabling organizations to securely manage and build on digital assets. My journey into entrepreneurship has been shaped by a mix of technical expertise, venture capital experience and a passion for building innovative technologies.
My co-founder, Sam Eiderman and I have deep backgrounds in the cybersecurity and infrastructure space holding roles in IDF Elite Intelligence Unit, Oracle, Google Cloud and have both been involved in the crypto space for over 10 years.
Through my decade-long involvement in the crypto space, I saw the growing need for a secure and flexible wallet solution tailored to on-chain operations like payments, tokenization, trading and treasury management. That realization led me and Sam to start Utila, combining our expertise to build the ultimate security-driven infrastructure for enterprises. Today, I’m focused on leading Utila’s vision, building a world-class team and driving product innovation to reshape how organizations manage and build on digital assets.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Utila. What is the market problem you want to solve? What is the real opportunity?
At Utila, we’re addressing a fundamental gap in the digital asset market that organizations today lack a secure, scalable and enterprise-grade solution for managing on-chain operations like payments, tokenization and treasury management.
The rise of stablecoins and digital asset adoption has shifted the industry from speculative trading to operational use cases. In 2024, stablecoin transactions reached $27.6 trillion, surpassing the volumes of Visa and Mastercard combined. This shift emphasizes the growing institutional adoption of blockchain-based transactions and brings with it the increasing demand for enterprise-grade, secure, high-speed operational platforms, like Utila.
Organizations don’t have many options today. They’re mostly stuck between ‘old-generation’ institutional wallets that are inflexible and lack relevant product offerings, or ‘simple’ wallets that are not institutional-grade. We provide the ultimate platform for on-chain operations with the highest security standards in the market
FinSMEs: What are the features differentiating the product from competitors?
By looking at the existing solutions and talking to different buyers we realized that the existing solutions were mostly built for large trading firms that mostly care about connectivity to a network of centralized exchanges and liquidity providers, including risk mitigation capabilities such as off-exchange trading.
On the other hand, when it comes to on-chain interactions which are mostly around utilizing stablecoins for payments, tokenization of real assets and interaction with smart contracts, there is a gap in terms of user experience, API offering and relevant product capabilities that are missing.
Besides that, there is a gap around the flexibility of existing solutions, the blockchain world is dynamic and existing providers tend to be very slow in supporting new ecosystems and protocols.
We provide the ultimate platform for crypto on-chain operations with the highest security standards of the market (MPC key management, MFA, confidential computing and robust user management and transaction policy engine). Our platform includes balance tracking, reconciliation, tokenization capability, connectivity to compliance and liquidity providers and more.
FinSMEs: You just raised a new funding round. Please, tell us more about it.
We just raised an $18M Series A round led by Nyca Partners with participation from seed investors Wing VC and NFX, as well as funds such as Haymaker Ventures, Gaingels and Cerca Partners. We plan to use the financing to scale global operations to meet the massive demand for our institutional MPC wallets and expand our R&D efforts. We’ve raised $30 million since exiting stealth in March 2024.
FinSMEs: Can you share some numbers and achievements for the business?
In just 18 months, we’ve already secured $35 billion in digital asset transactions, engaged hundreds of global clients and leaped forward to become a leading institutional-grade digital asset operations platform. We currently process over $8 billion in monthly volume and our momentum continues with the goal of reaching $1 billion in daily transaction volume by the end of the year.
FinSMEs: What are your medium-term plans?
In the medium term, we plan to use the funding to scale our global operations and meet the growing demand for our institutional MPC wallets. We’re expanding our sales and marketing team to accelerate growth and have recently opened our London office, with plans to expand into new jurisdictions. We’re also focusing on growing our R&D and product teams to deliver new capabilities that will enhance our platform. As we continue to support our growing customer base, we are also expanding our customer support and success teams. Our goal is to reach $1 billion in daily transaction volume by the end of the year, launch an on-premise offering, and extend digital asset support.
FinSMEs
19/03/2025