Symbiont

Market position

Symbiont described itself as a market-leading platform for institutional applications of blockchain technology and worked with industry participants including Citi, Nasdaq, Ranieri and Vanguard. Through the Synaps Loans joint venture it sought to compete with IHS Markit's ClearPar, which held a quasi-monopoly in the roughly $1 trillion U.S. syndicated loans market.

Assembly was positioned as allowing institutions to retain the peer-to-peer character of transactions without a central authority, while providing a shared database with end-to-end privacy, so participants did not have to surrender control of their data or their direct client relationships.

Technology

Assembly is an enterprise blockchain and smart contract platform for building and running decentralized applications, enabling complex instruments to exist through their entire lifecycle on a decentralized network with end-to-end privacy and shared-database properties, supporting smart contract and tokenization use cases.

Go-to-market

Direct engagement with large financial institutions and market infrastructure providers, supported by strategic investors and partners such as Nasdaq, which planned to integrate Assembly into the Nasdaq Financial Framework and explore business opportunities with its clients.

Financial institutions and market infrastructure operators, including banks, exchanges, asset managers and participants in data management, mortgages, private equity and syndicated loan markets.

Geography

Headquartered in New York City, serving global financial markets institutions.

History

Symbiont was formed in 2013 to apply blockchain technology to financial institutions. Early backers included the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and its board included a former Governor of Delaware, a former SEC Commissioner, a former CEO of NYSE, Euronext and Intercontinental Exchange, and representatives from the London Stock Exchange. In 2016 it entered a joint venture with Ipreo Holdings, implemented through Synaps Loans LLC, to build a syndicated loans platform. It closed a $20 million Series B in January 2019 led by Nasdaq Ventures. After IHS Markit acquired Ipreo in August 2018, Symbiont sued for breach of the joint venture's non-compete provision and prevailed in the Delaware Court of Chancery in August 2021. In December 2021 it took a $2 million secured loan from LM Funding America. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 1, 2022, and the court approved the sale of its assets to LM Funding in June 2023.

Risks & controversies

Symbiont's joint venture with Ipreo produced litigation and ultimately failed: Synaps Loans was wound down by court order, with the Delaware Court of Chancery in August 2021 finding Ipreo breached the joint venture's non-compete when it was acquired by IHS Markit and indicating Symbiont's share of a liquidating distribution would likely be around $70 million; IHS Markit said it would appeal. The court record described software glitches, delivery delays, short staffing at Symbiont and a 'concurrency bug' that delayed a platform demonstration from November 2016 to March 2017, and the judge noted Synaps Loans had no product, revenues or customers. The company subsequently entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its assets were sold.