Agio Ratings announced it had raised $4.6 million in pre-seed and seed funding to transform how the digital asset industry prices risk. Superscrypt led the seed round, which was joined by Portage, MS&AD Ventures, and several angel investors in insurance and asset management. The company, which launched in May 2022, enables institutions to price the risk of 30+ major trading venues.
Agio’s ratings respond to the lack of data quality that powers standard risk models. The company has developed quantifiable measures of default risk, starting with the leading centralized exchanges. Agio’s approach analyzes over 1,000 variables assembled from on-chain and off-chain data sources. Regarding predicting defaults, Agio’s models perform as well as the leading commercial models of default risk. Notably, the company flagged FTX as one of the riskiest exchanges in July 2022.
Agio assembled an experienced team of Ph.D. researchers and data scientists to develop its risk models. The company’s founders have decades of experience rating credit risk and are eager to apply their insights to a growing market. They are aiming to expand from 32 to 70+ rated entities by April.
Agio’s clients include some of the industry’s leading market participants, like LMAX Digital and Portofino.
KEY QUOTES:
“Digital asset investors deserve better, and increasingly capital allocators and regulators expect more. We believe the digital asset industry is massively underserved when it comes to access to reliable risk data. TradFi investors can price risk with help from the large ratings agencies but digital asset investors have no such luck. We are excited to have the support of Superscrypt, Portage, and MS&AD Ventures as we work to become the world’s most trusted source of risk analysis for this ecosystem.”
- Ana De Sousa, CEO of Agio Ratings
“What Agio is building is a critical enabler of greater counterparty transparency and a catalyst for greater institutional participation onchain. Beyond helping investors achieve high, risk-adjusted returns, it’s also about unlocking opportunities in credit creation and insurance underwriting which remain largely untapped in the Web3 space today.”
- Jacob Ko, Partner at Superscrypt
“Crypto institutions are innovators, but their tools for pricing risk are primitive. As an early investor, we believe that Agio Ratings will empower firms that trade and invest in digital assets to make more informed decisions with their capital.”
- Stephanie Choo, Partner at Portage
