APAC Year-End Note

It’s that time of the year to take stock and give thanks. The formal Talos global greeting was already posted last week here, but I felt compelled to write a special one for APAC given our recent milestones in the region.

It’s been just over 4 years since I joined Talos as the first employee in APAC, tasked by Anton and Ethan to build a meaningful business out here. I was armed with a pioneering product that we knew the market needed and empowered to hire a dream team of superb individuals and collaborators. It was still a bet though, for both sides!

Today, Talos has customers in 12 different countries across the Asia-Pacific region. Talos APAC contributes almost a third of our global revenues and volumes, and has become an important booking center for a large portion of our global clients. Many of our top clients globally are based in this region. Our brand and teams are recognized throughout APAC as industry leaders within our product verticals, with a relentless focus on high-precision software engineering, constant product innovation, customer obsession, as well as a hard-working and humble work ethic. We also like to have good, clean fun while we’re at it! 

I wanted to flag a few specific wins in 2025 that I am immensely proud of:

1. New Markets, New Segments, New Products!
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In 2025, we opened exciting new markets like Thailand, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, while continuing to grow in our core centers of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. We have onboarded many exciting new client segments across corporates, super apps, retail brokers, asset managers, payment providers, custodians, neo-banks, hedge funds and OTC desks. Institutional interest in the space has never been higher! Since our product line-up has grown beyond just our trading platform over the years, we are now also selling Treasury, Portfolio, Risk, and Data systems to our existing client base. Our regional sell-side customers continue to drive our global product roadmap with their dynamic customer bases and unique idiosyncrasies.

2. Moving into our new flagship offices in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar neighborhood

‍Talos has re-affirmed its commitment to the region by leveling up our offices to match our team’s growth, the profile of customers that we power today, and the increasingly impactful role that we play in the ecosystem. In 2022, we launched our first Singapore office with about 7 employees, taking over Fireblocks’s old space just as we came out of Covid. It was a cozy spot and it brought us good luck. Fast forward to today, and our nearly 20-strong group has taken over the top floor of the same building, a space that once used to be occupied by Spotify. I hope it brings us similar fortune! Despite being a remote-first firm, our APAC team comes into the office a lot - we laugh together, break bread together, work out together, and solve problems together - in person. We wanted to give the team a space to thrive, connect with our clients, and community-build with the industry at a grassroots level.

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Since moving in, we have hosted many of our customer trading teams for advanced training sessions on the Talos platform and industry catch-ups, featuring many of our clients and their leadership, discussing best practices from the buy-side, sell-side, and lessons from navigating complex market events (like the “10/10” market crash).

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3. Winning the HFM Asia award for “Best Digital Assets Provider”

‍This recognition complements our Hedgeweek APAC win for “Best Trading Platform” from a prior year, and all our other award wins around the world this year. Winning this category reflects our wider product range as we move beyond trading to become a one-stop-shop for infrastructure supporting the end-to-end investment lifecycle. We are starting to compete and win in categories that pool us together with the incumbent TradFi service providers as the industry starts to recognize how our innovative products often surpass the abilities of traditional trading and investment platforms in performance, architecture, and design.

I am beyond grateful to:

• The Talos founders, Anton and Ethan, for taking a leap of faith in me, and the global Talos team for their support for the APAC vision
• My APAC team for their relentless hard work, personal sacrifices, and unwavering dedication to the Talos mission: "bridging institutions into digital asset markets via best-in-class tools and technology"
• Our customers for their trust in us and constantly challenging our products to do more
• Our industry partners and friends for the continued collaborations, events, referrals, integrations, and shared common purpose in building the future of finance together

I have always believed that the Asia-Pacific region punches above its weight in the digital asset space, due to the strong concentration of “OG” web3 founders, exchange headquarters, derivatives trading interest, community-led ecosystems, fintech-forward retail investors, and pioneering regulators. All these factors combine to create a virtuous circle where we see the most exciting web3 projects being originated and financed from Asia. It’s an awesome privilege to be part of this dynamic region and sector!

If you got this far into my post, thank you for reading! I’ll sign off 2025 here by wishing you and your loved ones a happy holiday season, and cheers to good health and fortune for 2026!

Regards,
Samar

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