New investment: Helsinki based Tesseract

21 June 2021

Augmentum Fintech plc

$10 million investment into Finnish Fintech Tesseract

Augmentum Fintech plc (LSE: AUGM) (the “Company” or “Augmentum”), the UK’s only publicly listed investment company focussing on the fintech sector, announces that it has made a $10 million (c. £7.3 million) investment into Helsinki based Tesseract Group Oy (“Tesseract”), marking Augmentum’s first investment into Finland.

Augmentum is leading Tesseract’s $25 million Series A round alongside other investors including Sapphire Ventures, BlackFin Capital Partners, DN Capital, Coinbase Ventures and leading industry players Wintermute and Woorton.

Tesseract (www.tesseractinvestment.com) is a forerunner in the dynamic digital asset sector, providing digital lending solutions to market makers and other institutional market participants via regulated custody and exchange platforms. Tesseract was founded in 2017, is regulated by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (“FIN-FSA”), and was one of the first companies in the EU to obtain a 5AMLD (Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive) virtual asset service provider (“VASP”) licence. It is the only VASP with an express authorisation from the FIN-FSA to deploy client assets into decentralized finance or “DeFi”.

Taking no principal position, Tesseract provides an enabling crypto infrastructure to connect digital asset lenders with digital asset borrowers. This brings enhanced capital efficiency with commensurate cost reduction to trading, in a space that is currently significantly under-leveraged relative to traditional capital markets.

Martyn Holman, Partner at Augmentum Fintech, said: “We are witnessing wholesale changes in digital assets infrastructure as it evolves to the demands of increasing institutional activity. Following the separation of custody and trading in the first waves of evolution, Tesseract is addressing the next fundamental need in a space that has limited leverage capabilities. Tesseract’s management team have built a strong and profitable foundation with a great product and a clear vision”.

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Augmentum Fintech Tim Levene, Portfolio Manager Nigel Szembel, Investor Relations	[phone] [phone] [e-mail]
Peel Hunt LLP Liz Yong, Luke Simpson, Huw Jeremy, Tom Pocock (Investment Banking)	[phone]
Nplus1 Singer Advisory LLP Harry Gooden, Robert Peel, James Moat (Investment Banking)	[phone]
Frostrow Capital LLP Paul Griggs, Company Secretary	[phone]

About Augmentum Fintech

Augmentum invests in fast growing fintech businesses that are disrupting the financial services sector. Augmentum is the UK’s only publicly listed investment company focusing on the fintech sector in the UK and wider Europe, having launched on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018, giving businesses access to patient capital and support, unrestricted by conventional fund timelines and giving public markets investors access to a largely privately held investment sector during its main period of growth.

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