Multinational hedge fund and financial services firm Citadel Securities has bagged a small fortune in its latest funding round led by VC giants Sequoia Capital and Paradigm.
The company’s first-ever external funding round has procured a whopping $1.5 billion from investors, taking its valuation to $22 billion after nearly 20 years of establishment.
Sequoia Capital has invested in Citadel through three funds: Sequoia Heritage, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, and the Global Growth Fund. As part of the deal, Sequoia Capital partner Alfred Lin will also join Citadel’s board of directors.
One of the world’s leading market makers, Citadel manages nearly 30% of all transactions in the United States, including equities, fixed income, and other assets. With a minority investment from Paradigm, Citadel Securities inches a bit closer to cryptocurrencies as the VC firm largely focuses on crypto and Web 3-related firms.
Hinting Citadel’s entry into the crypto market, Matt Huang, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Paradigm, said:
“Citadel Securities has developed software and algorithms that have driven substantial improvement to market structures for the benefit of institutional and retail investors everywhere. We look forward to partnering with the Citadel Securities team as they extend their technology and expertise to even more markets and asset classes, including crypto.”
In a 2021 report by Reuters, Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel Securities, said that his firm does not trade cryptocurrencies due to “regulatory uncertainties” around them. “I just don’t want to take on the regulatory risk in this regulatory void that some of my contemporaries are willing to take on,” Griffin said at the time.
