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Swyftx Acquires Caleb & Brown
Swyftx Acquires Caleb & Brown

Transaction Overview

On July 1st, 2025, Swyftx, one of the largest Australian cryptocurrency exchanges, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Caleb & Brown, a high-net-worth-focused crypto brokerage, for an undisclosed amount.

 

Target: Caleb & Brown

Caleb and Brown is a Melbourne-based, high net worth focused crypto brokerage that specializes in personalized trading services across the digital asset landscape. Caleb & Brown focuses on the relationship model used successfully across traditional  financial services – every client that comes onto their platform gets assigned a broker to assist them in executing trades  and handling all customer service needs. Caleb and Brown’s core services include 1) Brokerage Services, which provide personalized 24/7 trading support for 250+ digital assets, 2) an OTC Desk, which provides high volume trading solutions with deep liquidity and competitive pricing, 3) the Caleb and Brown Asset Management, an actively managed crypto asset fund for accredited investor, 4) crypto custody. 

 

The business has more than AUD $2 billion of digital assets under custody and was founded by Rupert Hackett and Dr. Prash Puspanathan in 2016. C&B is led by CEO Jackson Zeng and has 64 team members across both Australia and the US. Caleb & Brown has not raised any outside capital. 

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

Architect Partners acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Caleb & Brown. 

 

Swyftx’s acquisition of Caleb & Brown marks the largest acquisition targeting high net worth crypto investors. It also reflects two important shifts in the evolution of crypto exchanges, particularly within the ANZ region.

 

First, high-net-worth client service is becoming a strategic differentiator. Exchanges are beginning to recognize that personalized brokerage and deep client relationships offer a competitive advantage while greatly reducing attrition. This is a model that high-net-worth clients are accustomed to in their financial lives. Caleb & Brown’s approach, which assigns a dedicated broker to every client, stands apart from the high-volume, low-touch models that dominate the market. Swyftx gains access not only to clients but also to an established business model that emphasizes trust, service, and retention in a way few crypto exchanges have pursued.

 

Second, this is a milestone moment for ANZ crypto M&A. While there have been many plays for global expansion by exchanges, this is the first of its kind in Australia moving into the US, signaling that the region is entering a more active phase of market maturity. 

 

We believe this transaction will serve as a catalyst for further strategic activity to expand globally and to augment services as companies seek differentiation in both product and customer segments.

 

Strategic Rationale

Swyftx is acquiring Caleb & Brown to expand into the United States via C&B’s regulatory framework, and to acquire the relationship model inherently required with a higher-tier customer base. This acquisition will grant Swyftx entry into the U.S. 12 to 24 months faster than otherwise possible organically. Furthermore, the acquisition diversifies Swyftx’s primarily retail client base to include 25k+ high net worth individuals in numerous countries. 

 

“Caleb & Brown has quietly established one of the most impressive brokerage offerings in the world, with a heavily differentiated private client service. We see enormous growth potential.” – Jason Titman

Insights

Private Financing Snapshot (Week of December 1 – December 7)

Steve Payne
December 10, 2025
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December 01 – December 07 (Published December 10th)

PERSPECTIVES by Steve Payne

 

38 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $216.6M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $609.4M 

Rolling 52-Week Average: $400.8M

 

Last week’s private financings again trended down. And again, we repeat that these deals have been worked on for months and just recently announced, so we don’t expect that current events are the prime drivers of activity. But check again with us next week….

 

There were two $50M rounds announced, both in our Developer Tools & Infrastructure subsector of crypto. Digital Assets, the Canton Network developer, raised $50M from trad investors including BNY Mellon, iCapital, Nasdaq, and S&P Global. This follows a $135M round announced earlier this year. Canton is building a privacy-focused, public Layer 1 blockchain designed for financial institutions.

 

The other $50M round was an announced commitment by Bitcoin mining pioneer Bitfury to Gonka. Bitfury, which spun out multi-billion dollar NASDAQ-listed mining leaders Cipher Mining and Hut8, last month announced a $1B fund to invest in “ethical companies” in segments including AI, quantum computing, self-sovereign identity and decentralized systems. Decentralized AI compute network Gonka fits nicely.

 

Bitfury CEO and co-founder Val Vavilov states that decentralized machine intelligence now stands among the most important frontiers and claims Gonka advances that frontier at exceptional speed. As with most decentralized compute providers, Gonka networks individual and data center compute into one open cloud – in this case, with the power of more than 6000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Gonka also features a unique Proof-of-Work model, designed to channel hardware power into productive AI tasks versus just consensus.

 

Decentralized AI attempts to solve several problems: concentration of compute with a few hyperscalers, access, transparency, data ownership and sharing incentives, etc. Players like Akash and Hyra Networks have been building out decentralized AI networks, and in the past six months we’ve seen a handful of new financings: ARO Network, Sparkchain AI, AINX, Manifold Lab, Acurast and DeepNode all raised early-stage rounds to build out their respective decentralized AI compute networks.

 

Manifold’s Targon network, built on Bittensor (Subnet 4), is particularly interesting – the Manifold team is led by well-known Bittensor founders and builders, and back in July Targon was already serving over 20B paid inference tokens a day, backed by 1,500+ H200s. Their $10.5M Series A was led by OSS Capital, with participation from Digital Currency Group and a long list of Bittensor and AI luminaries.