By Jonathan Birnbaum, Founder & CEO
Today, I’m excited to announce a major milestone for OpenYield: we’ve closed a seed round, bringing our total funding to $7 million. This marks a pivotal step forward in our mission to transform bond trading and build the bond market of the future.
At inception, we set out to tackle a notorious problem: trading bonds remains both challenging and costly. We considered two paths:
- Develop software to wrap around existing venues and dealers — a connectivity solution.
- Create a new venue and reimagine the market structure itself — a marketplace solution.
We chose the second path because it empowered us to set new trading standards via our ATS protocol that others could adopt, instead of vice versa. Consequently, the OpenYield marketplace upends the status quo with 100% firm prices with no minimums, prioritizing transparency and efficiency for all participants.
Participants need the pipes and tools to generate and route orders, so we’re encouraged by the surge of investment in connectivity solutions, execution management systems (EMS), portfolio platforms, and data/analytics products. The rapidly digitizing world of fixed income is ushering in a new, more connected ecosystem, accelerating the distribution of our marketplace.
Since launch, we’ve onboarded prominent liquidity providers and subscribers who can now access tens of thousands of bonds across Treasurys, corporates and munis in real time. We count 20+ institutional subscribers, including Apex Clearing, FMSBonds, Belle Haven Investments and Maritime Capital, joining leading firms such as Flow Traders and TD Securities Automated Trading. We leveraged cutting-edge technology to build our systems from scratch, giving us the flexibility to move quickly and continuously improve the trading experience.
This fundraise was led by Canapi Ventures, with additional participation from Clocktower Ventures and Flow Traders. They join an impressive roster of prior investors, including Fin Capital, TD Bank and other firms and angels from earlier rounds. These partnerships go beyond capital – their expertise in building enduring fintech businesses is invaluable as we forge connectivity with brokerages, advisors and asset managers.
Markets evolve in universal ways toward connectivity, efficiency and cost reduction. The reward for investors is not only transparency and cost reduction, but access to superior financial products. These benefits are taken for granted in the equities market, which underwent similar changes two decades ago, and we’re thrilled to drive forward the same changes for the global $100T+ fixed income asset class.
With this new fuel, we’re focused on expanding our reach while further developing our platform to support new protocols and products. The momentum is just beginning. The ethos of automation is growing. The bond market you’ve been waiting for is finally here, and we’re humbled to continue on the journey.
