Funding Roundup: Crypto Infrastructure All the Rage

Crypto infrastructure companies scored significant funding this week. 

Among them was Blockstream, which landed $125 million in a convertible note from London-based Kingsway Capital, with participation from bitcoin-focused Fulgur Ventures. The overall infrastructure trend isn’t necessarily new, but such efforts do appear to be escalating.

The latest capital haul follows the firm’s Series B in August 2021, when the company procured $210 million from investors to expand mining facilities and acquire Spondoolies, a crypto mining gear startup.

Erik Svenson, Blockstream’s president and chief financial officer, said in a statement that the fundraise allows the company to “accelerate” its year-over-year revenue growth and “build infrastructure for the future Bitcoin economy.”

Added Svenson: “We remain focused on reducing risk for institutional bitcoin miners and enabling enterprise users to build high-value use cases on the most secure, robust, and scalable blockchain in the world — Bitcoin.”

Another infrastructure company that corralled funding this week was QuickNode. The end-to-end development platform closed a $60 million Series B led by 10T holdings. Other investors who participated in the round include Tiger Global, Seven Seven Six, Protocol Labs and QED. 

The latest funding brings QuickNode’s total valuation to $800 million, and will be used to grow the company’s international presence.

“The long-term health and success of Web3 are dependent on scalability, accessibility, and interoperability,” ​​said Alexis Ohanian, founder of Seven Seven Six, which also invested in the company’s seed round.

”[QuickNode’s] foundational technology and platform is building not only to meet the current needs of top Web3-native companies and flagship global brands but also those of the future decentralized web,” he said.

In a smaller fundraising effort, Tholos, an MPC wallet platform — similar to Fireblocks — landed pre-seed funding of $1.5 million.

The round was led by four crypto-native venture capitalists, including North Island Ventures, Lattice, Dispersion Capital and Chainforest. A handful of angel investors also participated, Abraham Litwin-Logan, the founder of Tholos, told Blockworks.

Tholos’ team currently consists of the co-founders, a full stack engineer, a mobile engineer and the head of product and design, as well as two part-time senior back-end engineers. But additional hiring, enabled by the cash infusion, is already under way, according to the team.

“On the cryptography side of things — we’ve partnered with a multi-party computation cryptography team in Israel, which is made up of three cryptographers,” Litwin-Logan said, adding that the remaining cash would be used for product development and testing before it goes onto the market.

Other notable fundraises this week include:

• Spatial Labs lands $10 million from Blockchain Capital, with participation from Marcy Venture Partners, a firm co-founded by Jay-Z. 
• Gemba, a software developer for virtual reality training, secures $18 million from Parkway Venture Capital, bringing its valuation to $60 million. 
• London-based blockchain infrastructure company Calimero Network closes an $8.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, Lyrik Ventures and NEAR Foundation.

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