Funding Roundup: Crypto Companies in India, Switzerland Secure VC Funds

Venture capital firms continue to spread their funds to crypto startups around the globe, marking yet another week of dollars finding their way into the space despite the bear market.

India-based blockchain startup 5ire secured a $100 million Series A led by investors including Alphabit, Marshland Capital, Launchpool Labs and Moonrock Capital — giving it unicorn status as it reached a valuation of $1.5 billion.  

“5ire plans to aggressively grow into implementing the set of use cases and providing related services to those willing to be pioneers in their field of business by employing 5ireChain based solutions,” a 5ire representative told Blockworks. 

The company currently has an estimated 110 employees and plans to continue expanding its finance, human resources, technology, content, marketing, partnerships and business development teams.

Well-known digital asset management platform Gnosis Safe rebranded as “Safe” following a community vote and raised $100 million in funding led by early-stage crypto fund 1kx.

The foundation said the cash will allow Safe to develop a series of ecosystem applications and tools on its smart contract account protocol. 

Safe was not the only company that 1kx extended its coffers to this week. The firm also led funding for cross-chain infrastructure protocol Li.Finance. 

In Switzerland, Nevermined, a Web3 ecosystem development company focused on providing tools for users to read, write and own digital assets raised a 3 million euro ($3 million) seed round co-led by Signature Ventures and Polymorphic Capital. 

The startup started off as an incubation project within Keyko, a full-stack Web3 product and services company, and was aiming to solve issues around data sharing with tokenization and smart contract gateways. As it evolved, it became a decentralized digital assets solution with broader applicability.

“We see many startups that try to combine Data with Blockchains. Nevermined is the first company that understands the complexities and provides actual solutions at the intersection of Data and Web3,” Juliane Hahn, managing director at Signature Ventures, said in a statement.

“In the future, every data-driven company will require the ability to turn their data silos into data ecosystems.”

Moving forward, Nevermined CEO Don Gossen told Blockworks that the company plans to focus its efforts on marketing and branding and improve scalability by making its modular services more readily available via different channels.

Other capital raises this past week: 

• Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong-based gaming software and venture capital company behind The Sandbox, secured $75 million to expand its ‘open metaverse’ concept. Following the raise, the company is now valued at $5.9 billion.
• Quadrata, a startup that is building a Web3 identity passport, raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital Partners.
• Decentralized sports gaming Scorefam secured $25 million from Global Emerging Market via an initial coin offering.

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