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SheeldMarket is a technology company.
SheeldMarket, now Aplo, provides an institutional digital asset trading platform, offering regulated access to the cryptocurrency market. It facilitates secure, direct, and efficient trading via encrypted dark pools for large-volume transactions, minimizing market impact. The platform simplifies complex digital asset operations for institutional clients, ensuring robust infrastructure and regulatory compliance for portfolio management.
Founded by Arnaud Carrere, Oliver Yates, and Simon Douyer, the company originated from recognizing an underserved institutional digital asset market. Their backgrounds, including Supaero and UC Berkeley, highlighted the critical need for secure, regulated, and transparent trading. This insight led to developing a specialized platform addressing unique institutional cryptocurrency investor challenges.
Aplo serves institutional investors, such as hedge funds and asset managers, requiring compliant and reliable digital asset access. The platform enables efficient diversification and management of cryptocurrency holdings. The company envisions becoming the leading institutional gateway for digital assets, innovating to meet evolving market and regulatory demands, accelerating broader institutional cryptocurrency adoption.
SheeldMarket has raised $11.0M across 2 funding rounds.
SheeldMarket has raised $11.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
Aplo (formerly SheeldMarket) is a Paris-based technology company providing a regulated digital assets prime brokerage platform for financial institutions, enabling seamless access to liquidity across 300+ crypto assets via a single, secure interface.[7][1][2] It serves institutional investors like asset managers, hedge funds, and banks—particularly in Europe—solving the challenges of fragmented crypto trading by automating order routing to over 20 exchanges and OTC platforms for optimal execution, with average order sizes of $150,000 and a record of $1bn.[7][2][6] As an EU-regulated broker-dealer (French DASP registered with the AMF), it allows firms to trade unregulated crypto markets compliantly without direct exposure, featuring advanced algorithms for stealthy large-volume trades, institutional-grade custody with multi-sig, sMPC, and HSMs, and transparent pricing with no proprietary trading.[1][2][7] The company raised $10M in Series A funding in 2021 led by Atomico, showing early growth momentum pivoted from a dark pool concept to this broker model amid rising institutional crypto adoption.[1][2]
Aplo, originally founded as SheeldMarket in 2019 by three friends—Oliver Yates (CEO), and two others—from France's prestigious Supaero aeronautics and space engineering school, who shared interests in cryptocurrency and financial markets.[1] The initial idea was a cryptocurrency dark pool—a private, non-public exchange for institutional investors using encryption to hide positions and cutting-edge hardware isolation for low-latency security.[1][3][5] Jacques Lolieux, a Credit Suisse VP experienced in algorithmic trading tools like Cross Finder, joined as the fourth co-founder.[1] Early traction revealed insufficient institutional volume for a startup dark pool, prompting a pivot to a regulated broker-dealer model routing trades across exchanges.[1][2] By 2021, it secured $10M from Atomico (led by Niklas Zennström), Semantic, and angels like Ledger's Pascal Gauthier, fueling platform expansion.[1][2]
Aplo rides the institutionalization of crypto, bridging traditional finance with digital assets amid post-2021 regulatory clarity in Europe (e.g., MiCA framework) and surging demand from banks/hedge funds seeking compliant exposure.[1][2][4] Timing aligns with crypto's maturation—EU regs favor local players over US/Asia-focused rivals, while market forces like Bitcoin's volatility and DeFi growth demand efficient, low-impact trading tools.[1][2] It influences the ecosystem by lowering barriers for European institutions (e.g., via dark-pool-like privacy and aggregation), fostering broader adoption and reducing fragmentation—clients like Wave Financial and Deskoin report automation enabling faster market entry.[2][7]
Aplo is poised to scale as Europe's go-to prime broker, expanding DeFi integrations and liquidity amid tokenized assets and clearer global regs.[2][7] Trends like AI-driven trading, RWA tokenization, and institutional inflows (potentially trillions by 2030) will amplify its edge, evolving it from broker to full-suite infra provider. Watch for deeper TradFi partnerships and potential US expansion, solidifying its role in compliant crypto's mainstream shift—echoing its pivot from dark pool dreamer to $1bn-order executor.[1][7]
SheeldMarket has raised $11.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
SheeldMarket's investors include Niklas Zennström, Atomico, Axeleo Capital, Backed VC, BoxOne Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, IDInvest Partners, Ischyros New York, Lerer Hippeau, Mayfield, Northzone, Olima Ventures.
SheeldMarket has raised $11.0M across 2 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $10.0M Series A in October 2021.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2021 | $10.0M Series A | Niklas Zennström | Atomico, Axeleo Capital, Backed VC, BoxOne Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, IDInvest Partners, Ischyros New York, Lerer Hippeau, Mayfield, Northzone, Olima Ventures, Quadrille Capital, Alexis Bonillo, Biz Stone, Charlie Songhurst, Ian Hogarth, Michael Stoppelman, Tania Boler, Pascal Gauthier, Semantic Ventures |
| May 1, 2020 | $1.0M Seed | Axeleo Capital, Robert Li | Atomico, Ischyros New York, Lerer Hippeau, Alexis Bonillo, Charlie Songhurst, Charlie Songhurst, Acequia Capital, Kima Ventures |