Singapore's first financial-technology trading app, Spiking, which was developed and launched by the Aly Pte Ltd in April 2016 on Thursday has announced the closing of its Pre-A Series funding round at S$1.2 million and brings the total raised in the seed and Pre-A rounds to S$2.23 million. This is the first hybrid platform that will track transactions by whales in both the stock and cryptocurrency markets.
Dr Clemen Chiang, CEO of Aly Pte Ltd said "This important milestone validates what we've achieved so far with the Spiking app. With this fresh injection of capital, we will demonstrate user growth and focus on driving revenues with new monetization channels. This will lay the foundation for the subsequent Series A funding round."
After the launch of Spiking as a social stock trading platform, retail investors have been using it to track transactions of significant shareholders or whales of publicly listed companies. Currently, its coverage has extended to six stock exchanges in four markets such as US, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
"When I read reports from various sources...the doubt is always lingering in my mind - is this gossip, rumour or speculation? Why don't I track the real guy who puts the money on the table? Spiking connects the dots by knowing, and learning from, the ones who make a difference," says Dr Chiang.
The expansion of Spiking into the field of blockchain along with Spiking Crypto to transactions by the cryptocurrency whales is definitely a smart and strategic move to expand the product array from stocks to cryptocurrencies.
In addition, Dr Chiang stated "We believe that they belong in the same asset class for an investor. We will be the world's first blockchain Asset Validation and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven crypto trading infrastructure."
By addressing questions like, how do traders verify data on whales, their sentiments, and how to collect and verify such data? When to buy or sell? Spiking helps to close the information asymmetry gap in a largely unregulated cryptocurrency market, as it has done for the stock market.
The key investors in the Pre-A round include Mr Julian Chesser, Managing Director, Financial Markets, Singapore, IHS Markit (NASDAQ: INFO); Mr Carl Wang, General Manager, Eyougame (Eyou Technology Pte Ltd); Ms Lisa Theng, Managing Partner, Colin Ng & Partners LLP.
As perm Mr Chesser, "Spiking bridges financial markets with asset validation of sophisticated investors. Most importantly, they are able to leverage on their existing technologies to bridge the investors from both the stock and crypto markets."
In addition, Mr Carl Wang said, "With predictive AI and gamification features on big whales, Spiking is well geared to monetize the active retail traders and investors."
However, the Seed round was supported by investors such as Mr Koh Boon Hwee, Chairman of Credence Partners Pte Ltd, Mr Douglas Foo, Chairman of Sakae Holdings Ltd (SGX: 5DO), Mr Lim Ah Hock, Executive Chairman of Pestech International Bhd (KLSE: PESTECH), Mr James Tan, Managing Partner of Quest Ventures and Co-founder of 55tuan (NASDAQ:WOWO) and Mr Kazumasa Tomita, CEO of ZUU Co. Ltd. (TYO: 4387).
Spiking app, which has previously received support from Quest Ventures and National Research Foundation, Singapore Prime Minister's Office under the Interactive & Digital Media Strategic Research Programme's i.JAM Reload initiative, will have some next version upgrade that will feature powerful functionalities, such as ranking of stocks based on insider trades, ranking of sophisticated investors and investment funds, smart AI which offers different investing themes, data visualization for improved user experience, upgraded and optimized programming language using Golang, improved security and authentication using Open Authorization (OAuth) and advanced search filters with live notifications. The company said these upgrade will be available by the end of August.
Meanwhile, there is an Airdrop Campaign during which the public can collect complimentary Spike tokens at https://spiking.io/airdrop.
