Summary

• LO:TECH has raised £9 million, approximately $12 million, in a Series A led by MMC, with Faction, 13 Books Capital, and Atka participating.
• The London business is expanding institutional trading services built on infrastructure designed for continuous operation across multiple markets and asset classes.
• Funding will support expansion into New York and Singapore, including the development of regional operations and relevant regulatory authorisations.

London-based trading technology company LO:TECH has raised £9 million to expand an institutional trading business built around markets that operate continuously, bringing infrastructure developed for digital assets into services spanning traditional financial instruments and emerging tokenised markets.

The Series A was led by MMC, with participation from existing investors Faction and 13 Books Capital, alongside Atka. The company intends to use the funding to expand its international operations, develop client execution services, and pursue regulatory authorisations as it enters additional markets.

Founded by Tim Meggs and Marcus Horsley, LO:TECH develops technology for market making, trading, execution, and financial data. Its platform was designed to operate across multiple venues and asset classes, including digital assets and prediction markets, rather than being built exclusively around the fixed trading sessions associated with many traditional securities exchanges.

Alongside the funding, the company introduced an institutional execution offering based on infrastructure originally developed for its own trading activities. The service is intended to give financial organisations access to trading capabilities across different markets without requiring them to develop every component of the underlying technology internally.

Different markets require connected systems

Traditional capital markets have developed around defined trading sessions, exchange rules, and established settlement arrangements. Digital asset markets frequently operate around the clock, while tokenised financial instruments introduce additional combinations of trading venues, asset records, and transaction processes.

Financial institutions operating across these environments must manage pricing, liquidity, risk, and execution even when the markets involved follow different schedules. Technology designed to process activity during conventional trading hours may require substantial adaptation before it can accommodate continuous trading and the monitoring responsibilities that accompany it.

LO:TECH has developed shared infrastructure intended to handle data and transactions across multiple markets. Rather than operating entirely separate systems for every venue, the company uses common technology for functions such as pricing and risk management, with connections and processes adapted to the requirements of individual markets.

That architecture can make it easier to expand into additional trading venues, although each market introduces its own technical and operational characteristics. Execution methods, available liquidity, trading rules, and settlement arrangements may differ substantially even where instruments appear economically similar.

For institutions, access to multiple markets does not automatically improve trading outcomes. A useful execution service must provide dependable connectivity, competitive prices, appropriate controls, and the ability to manage transactions when particular venues become unavailable or market conditions change rapidly.

LO:TECH’s offering is intended to combine those capabilities within a service that customers can use rather than build themselves. Its commercial performance will depend on how the infrastructure operates across the venues and instruments required by institutional clients.

Liquidity provision meets institutional execution

Market making is one of LO:TECH’s established activities. Market makers provide buying and selling quotations, allowing other participants to trade without waiting for another customer to place an exactly corresponding order.

The activity requires continuous assessment of market prices, available inventory, trading costs, and the risks associated with holding positions. A business providing quotations across several venues must also manage differences in liquidity, transaction processing, and the information available about current market conditions.

High-frequency trading infrastructure can support those decisions by processing information and executing transactions rapidly. However, speed alone does not establish commercial success, particularly when a strategy must operate during periods of volatility or limited market liquidity.

LO:TECH has developed its own trading technology to support these activities and is extending parts of that capability to institutional customers. The new execution offering creates an additional commercial relationship, with clients seeking access to trading services rather than relying solely on the company as a participant providing market liquidity.

Customer requirements may include access to particular venues, dependable order handling, transaction reporting, and arrangements for managing execution risk. Institutions will also need to understand how the provider manages conflicts between proprietary trading and services supplied to customers.

The company’s platform also supplies market data, including information drawn from multiple trading venues. Such services can support financial applications and internal trading systems that require consistent information across different market environments.

The ability to provide execution and market data through shared infrastructure may create operational efficiencies, although the commercial benefits will depend on service pricing, reliability, and how customers integrate the technology into their existing systems.

Tokenisation widens infrastructure requirements

LO:TECH is developing its business as financial institutions explore the representation of conventional assets through blockchain-based systems. Tokenisation can change how information about ownership and transactions is recorded, potentially creating additional trading and settlement arrangements alongside established market infrastructure.

Those technical changes do not remove the economic requirements of trading. Investors still need liquidity, reliable price information, clear transaction terms, and confidence that their instructions will be handled appropriately.

Tokenised instruments may also have different legal characteristics, depending on the rights they represent and the jurisdiction in which they are offered. Infrastructure providers must therefore accommodate the distinction between the technical form of an asset and the financial regulations governing its use.

LO:TECH’s approach is to support activity across conventional and digital markets rather than limit its operations to one category of instrument. This may provide greater flexibility as financial products evolve, although the development of tokenised markets remains uneven and commercial demand cannot be assumed across every asset class.

The company is also active in prediction markets, where contracts are traded based on the outcome of defined events. Those markets introduce further differences in product structure and regulation, reinforcing the need for venue-specific controls within a broader trading platform.

Expansion brings licensing responsibilities

The new investment will support LO:TECH’s plans to expand into New York and Singapore, extending its operations beyond London. Both cities contain substantial financial markets and established technology industries, but the regulatory requirements applying to trading and execution services differ between jurisdictions.

Entering those markets will involve decisions about the activities LO:TECH intends to provide, the licences required, and the arrangements needed to manage customer relationships and trading risk. The company has said it will pursue relevant authorisations, including examining licensing options in the United States.

Raising investment does not establish that those authorisations have already been obtained. Services may also need to be adapted to local requirements governing market participation, financial instruments, client information, and the handling of transactions.

International operations introduce technical considerations as well. Trading organisations must maintain dependable connections to the venues they use, monitor activity outside the normal working hours of individual offices, and establish procedures for responding to operational incidents across different time zones.

LO:TECH’s focus on continuously operating markets makes these requirements part of the design of its trading business. Expanding internationally will test whether its shared infrastructure and operational arrangements can support a wider range of customers and market conditions.

The £9 million investment adds resources for that expansion and the development of institutional execution services. With the offering introduced, LO:TECH is extending technology originally used within its own trading operations into a broader financial services business spanning conventional, digital, and tokenised markets.