Datavault Pushes Into Banking Realm With BankWyse Acquisition

Data monetization and real-world asset tokenization company Datavault AI is set to acquire Wyoming financial institution BankWyse.

“This acquisition adds the final piece to Datavault AI’s data monetization ecosystem,” the company said in a news release Wednesday (Aug. 19).

“BankWyse operates under a Special Purpose Depository Institution charter granted by the state of Wyoming – generally viewed as the most innovative and digital asset advanced state in the U.S. They will provide custodial, commercial banking and other services in a safe and compliant manner.”

In the last few years, the release added, Datavault has been working to “fully service the digital asset ecosystem” by using technology like artificial intelligence (AI) to offer “safe and compliant” platforms and services.

“Customers will bring us their data and real-world assets. Those assets will be valued and tokenized, and will be held in custody, and when conditions are right, sold on our exchanges,” the news release added.

Datavault says exchange customers will get the opportunity to purchase and sell these tokenized assets on its exchanges while accessing banking services.

“This end-to-end data monetization ecosystem will eliminate the friction and fractionalization prevalent in the market today,” the company said.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster took a closer look at Special Purpose Depository Institutions (SPDIs) earlier this year in a conversation with Citi Global Head of Digital Assets for Treasury and Trade Solutions Ryan Rugg.

SPDI is a regulatory framework established in 2020 specifically to accommodate digital asset businesses. Institutions with this designation can custody digital assets and provide banking services, but they function under limitations distinguishing them from traditional banks.

“SPDIs must hold 100% against their deposits,” Rugg told Webster in an episode of the From the Block podcast. “They operate under banking regulation, but not with traditional lending.”

This model removes lending risk and lessens the chances of a bank run, though it also can limit the scale of services these institutions can provide.

Datavault’s acquisition of BankWyse comes days after the company said it would pay $94.5 million to purchase cybersecurity company CyberCatch.

“Cybersecurity is no longer a separate stack from data and AI,” Datavault AI CEO Nathaniel T. Bradley said in announcing the deal.

“It is the precondition for both. CyberCatch’s continuous compliance and cyber risk mitigation platform is expected to add to DataValue, DataScore and IDE a real-time risk and compliance signal at every node of our edge fleet, from federal contractors to enterprise data customers.”