Crypto Custodian Fireblocks Eclipses $1B Raised With $550M Series E
The company’s valuation increased to over $8 billion
Fireblocks leadership team (from left): Pavel Berengoltz, Michael Shaulov and Idan Ofrat; source: Fireblocks
key takeaways
- “We think it’s inevitable that every business will need to work with crypto or digital assets,” Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov CEO said
- The round was co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital
Digital asset custodian Fireblocks has raised a whopping $550 million round, bringing its total fundraising haul to more than $1 billion.
Fireblocks is now valued at more than $8 billion after the Series E round. CEO Michael Shaulov told Blockworks it’s “inevitable that every business will need to work with crypto or digital assets.”
CEO Michael Shaulov told Blockworks the company — valued at more than $8 billion after the Series E raise — thinks it’s “inevitable that every business will need to work with crypto or digital assets.”
To that end, the firm grew its institutional clients from 150 to 800 last year — an increase of 433%. The company expanded its presence in the Asia Pacific region, as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company plans to hire engineering and customer operations staffers with the capital, Shaulov said.
“Of course, we’re starting to see applications that are outside of the traditional financial institutions which we find the most exciting and where we’re planning to take a big chunk of the funds to allocate resources there,” he added.
The hot fundraising demand stems from accelerating institutional adaptation of crypto, as well as corporations looking to build, and safekeep, first-time crypto products, the CEO said.
The round was co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital with participation from General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Mammoth, CapitalG, Altimeter, Iconiq Strategic Partners, Canapi Ventures and Parafi Growth Fund.
Fireblocks now has $45 billion of custodied assets. Earlier this month, Fireblocks joined Aave Arc to launch a permissioned version of its decentralized finance liquidity protocol so that institutional players could join in DeFi, Blockworks previously reported.
“Long term we are investing in developing the easiest to use platform for crypto operations, expanding the Fireblocks Network, and enabling support for NFTs, DeFi, payments, and tokenization,” Shaulov said.
A top priority for Fireblocks this year is to make a big push into Web3. Its platform supports over 30 blockchains and 1,000 cryptocurrencies with $2 trillion in digital assets transferred. It powers use cases across trading, gaming, NFTs, digital securities and payments with a focus on transitioning the digital asset economy from Web2 to Web3.
“Crypto will continue to drive key innovations in the traditional financial sector,” Shaulov said. “By the end of 2022, we believe a majority of traditional financial institutions will have either already launched or will be close to launching new crypto products and services.”
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