Funding News: Fireblocks, Eco and Saber Labs Raise Millions

Today, Fireblocks, Eco and Saber Labs announced new funding rounds with plans to focus on hiring, wallet development and expansion, building relationships with traditional financial institutions and more.

Here’s a rundown of the headlines: 

Fireblocks boosts unicorn status with new funding and $2 billion valuation

Digital asset platform Fireblocks raised $310 million in Series D funding, just four months after its last $133 million Series C round, the company said in a statement. 

Sequoia Capital, Stripes, Spark Capital, Coatue, DRW VC and SCB 10X co-led the round alongside Siam Commercial Bank, Thailand’s oldest bank.

Siam Commericial Bank is the third bank to invest in Fireblocks in addition to BNY Mellon and SVB Capital. 

To date, Fireblocks has transferred over $1 trillion in digital assets. The company’s client base has grown 400% —  from serving 100 financial institutions in the beginning of the year to about 500 companies by June. 

“A lot of it is due to the extended growth of the sector, new businesses being set up and traditional businesses coming in, while the existing players are scaling up,” CEO Michael Shaulov told Blockworks in an interview. 

Shaulov said the funding will be used to allocate more talent, work with bigger banks and financial institutions to “enable new use cases and bring more data assets to blockchain, whether it’s payment domains, stablecoins or digital securities,” in addition to advising and providing technology for traditional institutions. 

Financial technology and banks are joining forces in pursuing the cryptocurrency space in a “gradual progress,” Shaulov said, because these institutions are all trying to become digital asset enabled businesses and they’re afraid they’ll miss an opportunity. 

“For them, it’s an opportunity to even the playing field with some of their competitors and try to enter earlier. We have seen banks on the high-end of the market and mid-sized banks that are digital friendly establishing (their place). The groups that are more active are on the sideline coming in,” he said. 

Digital wallet Eco raises $60 million in funding 

Activant Capital and L Catterton co-led the most recent fundraising round for Eco, a few months after the company raised $26 million in a round led by a16z in March. 

The company has begun onboarding some of the 180,000 people on the waitlist for its digital wallet via one-to-one sessions. However, CEO Andy Bromberg would not disclose the exact number to Blockworks during an interview.

“Finances are a personal matter and it’s a really big personal decision and a lot of FinTech products have tried to get as many people on board as possible and our approach is more measured here,” by doing one-on-one sessions with users, Bromberg said. “We’re willing to commit the time and energy to do that.”

The funding will help accelerate its product roadmap to consolidate financial tools into a single wallet, the company said. “Everything is quote-end-quote ‘smart’ in today’s world: smart cars, smart fridges, smart doorbells, smart everything and yet, the financial system is still dumb,” Bromberg said. 

“It’s using old technology that’s disconnected from all the innovation that happened in the last decade or two and it hasn’t changed,” he added. “We’ve got prettier applications built on top of it, but the fundamental technology, infrastructure and alignment hasn’t changed. 

The company is focusing on it’s “Smart Money” strategy, a promise to consumers to deliver financial services on a better infrastructure, alignment and product, which in this case — is having the product on USDC on the Ethereum blockchain, Bromberg told Blockworks. 

“We think it’s time for ‘Smart Money’ and there will be more after us and that’s something we’re extremely supportive of because we think the world deserves better financial services,” he said. 

Saber Labs raises $7.7 million led by Race Capital 

Saber Labs, a contributor to Saber, a cross-chain stablecoin exchange on Solana, announced it has secured $7.7 million in a seed round led by Race Capital, marking the first fundraising round for the lab founded by brothers Dylan and Ian Macalinao. 

Other investors include Chamath Palihapitya’s Social Capital, Jump Capital, Multicoin Capital, Solana Foundation, in addition to other crypto industry people from FTX, Okcoin, Curve, Terra and Stacks.

The funding will be used to hire new talent, develop marketing and business strategies and expand product development to support every major chain, specifically Polygon and Celo, Dylan Macalinao, co-founder and CEO of Saber Labs, said in an email to Blockworks. It currently supports assets from Ethereum, Terra, Solana and Bitcoin, he said. 

Saber has seen extensive growth since its beta launch last month, attracting over $100 million in exchange liquidity. It has since become the fourth-largest application on Solana in terms of total value locked (TVL). In the past week-and-a-half Saber’s TVL increased 2,200% from $5 million to $115 million, which is the highest of any Solana application, Macalinao said. 

“We expect Saber TVL to continue to rapidly increase as more projects integrate with Saber’s deep on-chain liquidity,” Macalinao said. 

The company focuses on helping users trade digital assets quickly and efficiently through the Solana blockchain and the funds will be used to expand its decentralized liquidity network beyond its current assets originated from Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Terra, the company said. 

Decentralized assets from one blockchain can’t natively exist on another, so stablecoins offer an easier way to trade tokens on different platforms and exchange values across the ecosystem, the company said. 

“Long term, because Saber will have the best liquidity for transferring between cross-chain assets, we see the exchange being touched by every user moving-in-and-out of Solana, which will scale directly with Solana’s growth as a DeFi and Web3 blockchain,” Macalinao said.