US-based blockchain software provider Consensys secured $200m from investors including digital entertainment and blockchain technology provider Animoca Brands, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and financial services firm HSBC yesterday.
Hedge fund Marshall Wace also took part in the round, as did Third Point, Think Investments, ParaFi Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Spartan Group and DeFiance Capital, while Coinbase invested through corporate venturing subsidiary Coinbase Ventures.
Consensys provides tools enabling blockchain developers to launch products on the Ethereum network, with a view to making web 3.0 applications such as non-fungible token marketplaces, play-to-earn gaming and decentralised finance easier to use.
The cash was raised at a $3.2bn valuation and will be used to support the growth of Infura, the company’s blockchain development tool, and MetaMask, an Ethereum crypto-wallet and portal to blockchain apps, as well as increasing headcount by about 400.
Consensys had raised $65m in an April 2021 round featuring cloud storage provider Protocol Labs, quantitative trading firm Alameda Research, payment services provider Mastercard, financial services firms UBS and JP Morgan and trading firm CMT’s investment arm, CMT Digital.
Maker Foundation, which is affiliated with the Dai stablecoin, filled out the April round along with Greater Bay Area Homeland Development Fund, Quotidian Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, The LAO and Liberty City Ventures. It came after telecommunications company SK Telecom had invested $8.6m in mid-2019.
Joseph Lubin, Consensys’s founder and chief executive, said: “The paradigm shift to a world running on decentralised protocols is in full gear. The pace of adoption is now so rapid that we have more than doubled many of our core [key performance indicators] since this deal was struck over the summer.”
