Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_6296b90c9be0f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and GV Capital, the investment arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.</li>
 <li>The extended round follows its Series B in February in which it managed to pick up a further $33 million in fresh capital</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Blockchain infrastructure provider InfStones said it has edged closer to “unicorn status” with this latest funding round of an extended Series B, which saw the firm pick up a further $66 million.



The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 — one of the world&#8217;s largest technology-focused investment funds — and GV Capital, the investment arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.



Participation in the round also came via venture capital firms INCE Capital and SNZ Holding as well as venture funds 10T Fund and A&amp;T Capital. A representative from InfStones was not immediately available for comment on its post-money company valuation to date.



The fresh injection of capital will be used for enterprise-wide expansion and to accelerate growth, according to a company statement shared with Blockworks on Wednesday. That includes growing the firm&#8217;s team and its offerings, an expansion into new markets, and acquisition efforts.



“Our vision is to provide a rugged, easy-to-use Web3 environment to build a more transparent, intelligent world,” InfStones CEO Zhenwu Shi said in the statement. “We intend to drive rapid adoption of Web3 decentralized applications worldwide.”



InfStones&#8217; latest raise follows on from its Series B raise in February in which the firm managed to pick up $33 million to further develop its platform. The company also had a $10 million Series A raise in August of last year, bringing InfStones&#8217; total funding to roughly $109 million to date.



InfStones was founded in 2018 as a staking and infrastructure platform, providing services to institutional clients.



The company dubs itself as a &#8220;Platform-as-a-Service,&#8221; supplying blockchain infrastructure to Web3 innovators while boasting support to over 10,000 nodes on a &#8220;rapidly growing&#8221; list of blockchains including Ethereum, Chainlink, Polkadot, Cardano and Solana.



“InfStones provides the foundational infrastructure layer for the Web3 era, offering an enterprise-grade node management and staking platform that makes it painless for customers to participate in Web3 and DeFi,” Dennis Chang, managing partner at Softbank Investment Advisers, said.



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Funding

Blockchain Infrastructure Provider InfStones Nabs $66M in Extended Funding Round

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_6217a432fd94b" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>InfStones supports nodes on over 50 chains including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, Cardano and Chainlink</li>
 <li>The platform’s customers include Binance, Dune Analytics, Polygon, Circle and Compound</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Blockchain infrastructure provider InfStones closed a $33 million Series B round to further develop its platform, Zhenwu Shi, founder and CEO of the firm, said to Blockworks.



The round included investors from Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Dragonfly Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, DHVC, A&amp;T and Value Internet Fund.&nbsp;



The company previously raised $12 million in its seed round and Series A, bringing its total funding to $45 million. Shi declined to disclose a valuation.



With the new funding, the company plans to triple its team from 30 to 90 employees over the next year and expand support to over 100 chains and protocols.



InfStones was founded in 2018 and is a staking and infrastructure platform that provides services for institutional clients and supports nodes on over 50 chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/what-is-solana-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ethereum-rival/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Solana</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinshare-launches-new-etps/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Polkadot</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/cardano-polkadot-etps-hit-frankfurt-stock-exchange/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cardano</a> and Chainlink.



“Demand for our infrastructure platform service has been very strong,” Shi said. “InfStones has been profitable from day one.”



The platform’s customers include <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-exchange-binance-receives-200m-stake-in-forbes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Binance</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/web3-data-firm-dune-analytics-hits-unicorn-status/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dune Analytics</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/polygon-closes-450m-raise-led-by-sequoia-india/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Polygon</a>, Circle and Compound, among others, he noted.



“As Web3 technology and applications grow, data structure and architecture will become more and more decentralized,” Shi said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Web3 applications are not intuitively easy to use or develop, so the Web3 ecosystem requires an AWS-like layer solution to increase the speed and growth of Web3 adoption.”</blockquote>



In addition to the capital raise, the provider is launching a new front-end user interface that lets users deploy nodes within minutes, it said. The public application programming interface (API) is available for Ethereum, Neo, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/in-overture-to-decentralization-binance-rebrands-its-blockchain/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BNB Chain</a> — formerly known as Binance Smart Chain, or BSC — and BSC Archival Data. It plans to add support for Cosmos and other chains in the future.



The API will continue to add features that give developers full automation, fast deployment and multi-cloud support, Shi said.&nbsp;



Going forward, the provider will focus on further developing the blockchain platform to become the “preferred AWS of Web3,” Shi said.



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Zhenwu Shi

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