Blockchain outfit Chainalysis valued at $2bn after new round

26 Mar 2021

Image: © piter2121/Stock.adobe.com

Marc Benioff’s fund has invested in the company’s $100m round as the blockchain and crypto space continues to heat up.

Chainalysis, which helps businesses and governments analyse blockchain, has raised $100m in a round that values the company at $2bn.

The Series D round was led by crypto investor Paradigm, with participation from Time Ventures – the investment firm of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Other backers Ribbit Capital and Addition returned to invest in the company again.

New York-headquartered Chainalysis was founded in 2014 and provides data analysis tools for blockchain transactions to optimise performance, ensure compliance and weed out fraud. It has amassed several large enterprise clients that use its tech, including Barclays and Jack Dorsey’s Square as well as government agencies.

As more large companies and institutions have begun using blockchain in various forms, companies like Chainalysis and rivals such as CipherTrace and Elliptic have emerged to support that adoption and help make sense of the technology.

The bumper funding round coincides with a great deal of hype around the bitcoin and blockchain space at the moment. Bitcoin recently reached a record price more than $60,000 while non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are underpinned by blockchain, have garnered much mainstream attention of late.

Use cases for blockchain like NFTs – and the large sums of money at play – make data analytics all the more important for firms and large investors looking to get in on the action.

According to a statement from the company, it will be investing the fresh round of funds in new product development, which is targeted at three prongs: asset managers and financial institutions, government bodies, and cryptocurrency businesses.

“Powering the regulatory infrastructure of the industry is the heart of our business and our team works every day to protect the ecosystem,” the company said.

Chainalysis’s funding round marks another big step for crypto-related companies in the mainstream. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will soon be going public on the stock market and is tipped to be valued at up to $100bn.

Earlier this week, Tesla announced that it would accept payments for its cars in bitcoin just a few weeks after the company invested $1.5bn in bitcoin to hold on its balance sheet.

Jonathan Keane is a freelance business and technology journalist based in Dublin

editorial@siliconrepublic.com