Symbiont

Symbiont, founded in 2013, was a technology company that developed enterprise blockchain solutions for complex global finance problems. The company's primary product was Assembly, an enterprise blockchain platform designed to remove operational friction from the lifecycle of financial instruments while enabling real-time data sharing with optimal security and privacy. Symbiont's technology was utilized by major financial institutions for various purposes, including index data management, margin calculation for foreign exchange contracts, and corporate event information distribution.

Symbiont's Assembly blockchain demonstrated impressive performance capabilities, processing up to 87,000 transactions per second during a live test on four nodes. This speed significantly surpassed that of traditional blockchain networks like Bitcoin. The company employed a fee-based business model, charging clients for licensing the software and additional fees for originating new investment vehicles on the platform.

Despite initial success and high-profile partnerships, Symbiont faced financial difficulties and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 1, 2022. The company's assets and liabilities were reported to range between USD 1 million and USD 10 million at the time of filing. In May 2023, Symbiont announced it was pursuing a sale of its assets, including all intellectual property, technology, and physical equipment, with the sale expected to be finalized by early June 2023. On December 27, 2023, LM Funding America, Inc. sold Symbiont's blockchain technology to Platonic Holdings Inc. for USD 2 million.

Key customers and partnerships

Vanguard, a major investment management company, had been using Symbiont's technology since 2017 to integrate index data into its trading systems. In December 2021, State Street and Vanguard completed a live 30-day foreign exchange forward contract using Symbiont's Assembly platform for margin calculations.

Other notable partnerships included Citi, SWIFT, and American Century Investments. In September 2022, SWIFT announced it was piloting Symbiont's Assembly to improve access to corporate event details for investors, dealers, and custody banks. The company also collaborated with Goldman Sachs and Blackstone subsidiary Ipreo to launch Synaps Loans, a venture aimed at creating Assembly-based syndicated loan offerings. Additionally, Symbiont partnered with the state of Delaware to digitize the process of registering companies, tracking shares, and managing shareholder communications using the Assembly blockchain.