Octaura, the New York-based fintech startup, has secured $46.5 million in Series A funding to continue its mission of bringing structured finance into the digital age. The round saw participation from top-tier financial institutions and venture investors, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Moody’s, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and strategic partners like Motive Partners, OMERS Ventures, and MassMutual Ventures.

The funding fuels Octaura’s momentum in building a comprehensive, interoperable platform for trading syndicated loans and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) - an industry long constrained by outdated systems and fragmented processes.

The investment underscores a critical moment for the $12 trillion structured finance market, which remains largely fragmented, opaque, and reliant on outdated processes.

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A New Infrastructure for an Outdated Industry

Octaura’s mission is bold but necessary: to deliver a comprehensive electronic trading platform for syndicated loans and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) - a sector that’s long overdue for digitization. The company, led by CEO Brian Bejile, is developing a unified workflow solution that combines real-time pricing, trading, data analytics, and post-trade capabilities in one intuitive interface.

This marks a transformative shift away from manual spreadsheets and bilateral phone negotiations, toward a more liquid, data-rich, and scalable infrastructure. With this latest raise, Octaura plans to accelerate its platform development, grow its engineering team, and expand connectivity with major institutional players.

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Here’s the insight founders should internalize:

If you’re building in a legacy-dominated market, the opportunity isn’t just in building better tech - it’s in aligning the value chain around new behavior. Octaura isn’t just offering a trading UI. It’s rewiring an entire capital flow by making execution easier for every participant. The moat comes from being the infrastructure everyone has a stake in - not just a tool. When designing for entrenched industries, your product must serve not only functionality but shared interest and trust across stakeholders. This is how platform dominance is achieved - not just by innovation, but by orchestration.   

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Why Now: Structured Finance Is a $3 Trillion Digital Opportunity

The structured finance market - comprising CLOs, CMBS (commercial mortgage-backed securities), ABS (asset-backed securities), and leveraged loans - has become one of the last frontiers of modernization in capital markets. Despite handling over $3 trillion in assets globally, the sector remains largely untouched by the technological transformation that has already reshaped equities, FX, and bond trading.

According to data from the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA), the leveraged loan market alone was worth approximately $1.4 trillion in the U.S. as of 2023, while CLOs surpassed $1.3 trillion in total assets globally. However, only 20-25% of structured credit trades are executed digitally, making the market ripe for disruption.

Regulators, including the SEC and ESMA, are also increasingly pushing for greater auditability and post-trade transparency, further reinforcing the need for platforms like Octaura.

In parallel, buy-side firms are under pressure to cut costs, scale operations, and extract better data from their trades. These tailwinds create a perfect storm for a digital platform that brings speed, compliance, and efficiency to one of the most complex financial verticals.

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Consortium-Led Innovation: Octaura’s Unique Market Position

Rather than disrupt from the outside, Octaura was incubated within Citi and Bank of America, then spun out with direct participation from its key ecosystem stakeholders. This allows for smoother onboarding, unified workflows, and natural adoption across trading desks.

The company’s biggest edge isn’t just technology - it’s the ability to align incentives across sell-side banks, buy-side managers, and rating agencies. By acting as a neutral digital hub rather than a one-sided vendor, Octaura offers a trusted platform that players across the capital structure can rally behind.

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Why This Matters Now: Opportunity in Structured Credit Tech

The structured finance market - particularly CLOs and syndicated loans - has long suffered from illiquidity, price opacity, and complex settlements. With more than $1.4 trillion in CLOs outstanding globally and $1.3 trillion in U.S. leveraged loans, inefficiencies in trading cost institutional investors billions annually in time and spread losses.

Despite massive volumes, only a fraction of deals are executed electronically. Most trades are still negotiated over the phone and settled with emails and PDFs. The post-trade process alone can take several days, and there is little transparency on real-time pricing or best execution.

This disconnect represents a prime opening for fintech disruption, especially as regulatory pressure and digital expectations rise across financial markets. According to Coalition Greenwich, only 15% of corporate loan trading volume was electronic in 2023, compared to 80%+ in equities and government bonds.

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Octaura’s Approach: Built for Interoperability and Scale

What makes Octaura uniquely positioned is its consortium-backed model. Rather than competing against incumbents, it brings them together to establish a shared standard. This rare alignment has allowed Octaura to secure direct connectivity with major dealers, asset managers, and data providers from day one.

The platform integrates key services such as:

• Real-time multi-dealer pricing
  
• Pre-trade analytics and scenario modeling
  
• Automated post-trade workflows
  
• Audit-ready records for compliance
  

By delivering this infrastructure as a neutral, participant-driven utility, Octaura reduces the friction traditionally involved in market modernization - paving the way for faster adoption and deeper liquidity.

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What’s Next for Octaura?

With this infusion of capital, Octaura is set to:

• Expand its engineering and sales teams
  
• Enhance its CLO and loan trading capabilities
  
• Broaden adoption among asset managers and buy-side institutions
  
• Deepen strategic integrations with third-party systems and data providers
  

The long-term goal? To become the Bloomberg Terminal equivalent for structured finance - a one-stop ecosystem where traders, analysts, and compliance officers all operate from a common digital layer.

As financial institutions hunt for alpha and cost efficiency in tighter markets, tools like Octaura represent not just convenience, but competitive necessity.