Early Tesla Investor Baillie Gifford Backs Blockchain.com with $100M

Baillie Gifford, which manages $445 billion in assets, is known for investing in some of technology’s biggest names early on, including Google, Amazon and Airbnb.

share

key takeaways

  • Blockchain.com secured $420 million in two fundraises in February and March and has a valuation of $5.2 billion
  • The contribution to the $300 million Series C raise last month is the largest single investment in Blockchain.com ever made

Baillie Gifford & Co., the 110-year-old asset management firm known for its substantial early bet on Tesla Inc. and other technology companies, has invested $100 million in cryptocurrency wallet start-up Blockchain.com. 

The Edinburgh-based firm’s contribution to the $300 million Series C raise last month is the largest single investment in Blockchain.com ever made, co-founder and CEO Peter Smith announced in a post Wednesday. It also marks one of Baillie Gifford’s first investments in the cryptocurrency space. 

“As one of their first investments in a crypto company, we’re honored to include them on our journey,” Smith said in the post. “It’s also a validation that a balanced and diversified retail/institutional business has incredible growth potential in the coming years.”

Baillie Gifford, which manages $445 billion in assets, is known for investing in some of technology’s biggest names early on, including Google, Amazon and Airbnb. The firm started investing in Tesla in 2013, when shares were around $6, and today remains one of the largest outside investors in the electric car company. As of August 2020, Baillie Gifford earned $16 billion in profit from its Tesla investment alone. 

Baillie Gifford’s interest in Blockchain.com is not isolated. The London-based start-up secured $420 million in two fundraises in February and March and has a valuation of $5.2 billion.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

LTIPPanalysis.png

Research

This report is a retroactive analysis of Arbitrum's Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP). We collect relevant data at a protocol level and review bi-weekly updates to analyze recipients, their strategies, and the impact of the incentives on high level growth metrics. In particular, we want to highlight outperformers and underperformers, and glean any best practices or lessons learned for protocols distributing ARB incentives in the future. The overarching goal is to synthesize lessons learned that the DAO can reference as it begins thinking about future incentives programs–namely, the working group for incentives that is being actively discussed–especially as Timeboost introduces new conditions for trading and economic activity.

article-image

The data aggregator launched its mobile app as it looks to scale up operations

article-image

Something very interesting showed up in the FOMC November meeting minutes this week

article-image

Bitcoin retreats from $100K, altcoins and NFTs gain momentum, and stablecoins hit record highs — spotlighting crypto market dynamics.

article-image

Let’s raise a toast to another year of SOLid progress

article-image

ParaFi’s Ben Forman and Kevin Yedid-Botton break down their biggest predictions for the Empire podcast

article-image

OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash in 2022, claiming the mixer had been used to launder more than $7 billion in crypto