a16z to lead $300M round in Canton Network creator Digital Asset at $2B valuation
What's the deal? Digital Asset Holdings, the company behind the Canton Network blockchain, is in talks to raise approximately $300M at a roughly $2B valuation, with a16z cryptoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → leading the round, according to Bloomberg. The round is expected to close in May 2026 and the final amount could change.
Canton Network is a blockchain infrastructure designed specifically for financial institutions — a privacy-enabled system that allows banks and trading firms to transact using tokenised assets while keeping sensitive information confidential.
Unlike public blockchains where all transactions are visible, Canton allows participants to share only what they need to with each relevant counterparty.
In February 2026, a group of global financial firms completed the first cross-border intraday repurchase agreement using tokenised UK gilts on Canton — the first time digital versions of gilts, a $2 trillion market, had been used in an intraday repo across borders.
Why now? Tokenisation of real-world financial assets — bonds, equities, money market funds — has moved from concept to live deployment at several major financial institutions. Canton is positioned as the connective tissue between those deployments, enabling interoperability across institutions that would otherwise operate siloed tokenisation infrastructure.
The February 2026 gilt repo transaction demonstrated that Canton can handle genuinely complex, cross-border financial transactions — a meaningful proof point for institutional adoption.
For a16z crypto, the investment would be one of the first deployments from its newly closed $2.2B Fund V and signals that institutional blockchain infrastructure is a priority within its crypto-pure thesis.
What could go wrong? Digital Asset has been building institutional blockchain infrastructure since 2014 — a long runway without a dominant commercial outcome. Several competing infrastructure plays, including JPMorganDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s Onyx and various R3 Corda deployments, have also been building in this space for years with mixed commercial results.
Institutional adoption of tokenisation has been slower than many predicted, and converting technical proof points into recurring revenue at scale remains the central challenge.
The signal: The deal reflects a growing conviction that institutional blockchain infrastructure is finally approaching commercial maturity. Canton's advantage over earlier permissioned blockchain attempts is its privacy architecture — allowing institutions to participate in a shared network without exposing their positions or strategies to competitors. If that model gains adoption across global financial markets, Digital Asset could become foundational infrastructure for the next generation of capital markets.
a16z's willingness to lead the round — from a fund explicitly dedicated to crypto — suggests it sees Canton not as a niche enterprise IT project but as a genuinely significant piece of financial infrastructure.
Sources:
Bloomberg
CoinDesk
Tech in Asia
Crypto Times
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