Israeli startup Fireblocks, which specializes in secure cryptocurrency transfers, announced the completion of a Series B funding round of $30 million, bringing to $46 million the amount raised by the company to date. The current round was led by Paradigm, with participation from existing investors, Gili Raanan's investment fund CyberStarts (in which Shlomo Kramer and Mickey Boodae ar einvested), Tenaya Capital, Swisscom, Galaxy Digital, Digital Currency Group (DCG), and Cedar Hill Capital.
Paradigm co-founder and managing partner Fred Ehrsam, a co-founder of Coinbase, has joined Fireblocks' board of directors.
Fireblocks is a platform for financial organizations that provides a secured infrastructure for the transfer, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure.
Fireblocks says that it has secured the transfer of over $150 billion in digital assets since its platform was launched in June 2019. Among its customers are well-known blockchain and fintech companies such as Revolut, Celsius, BlockFi, PrimeTrust, Genesis, and Nexo. According to the company, the Fireblocks Network comprises more than 160 active institutional participants, including some of the crypto world's biggest liquidity providers, such as B2C2, Galaxy, Amber, and Three Arrows.
Fireblocks' activity has grown substantially in the past few months, among other things thanks to the positive trend in the global cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, is close to the all-time peak value it reached three years ago, above $18,000.
Fireblocks is now one of the largest blockchain companies in Israel,. It employ 75 people, 50 of them at its R&D center in the We TLV tower in Tel Aviv. It also has offices in New York, in Europe, and in Hong Kong and Singapore. The company says that it will use the money raised to expand its workforce to 150 in 2021, with the number of developers in Israel being doubled to 100. It has recruited former Cico VP Matt Maloney as SVP of Global Sales.
Fireblocks was founded in 2018 by three high-tech entrepreneurs: its CEO Michael Shaulov, who in the past founded Lacoon Mobile Security, which was acquired by Check Point five years ago for $100 million; Idan Ofrat, CTO, who co-founded C4 Security, which was acquired by Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE: ESLT); and VP R&D Pavel Berengoltz, who was VP R&D at Safend, which was acquired by Wave Systems.
"In the third quarter of 2020, we've seen a 533% increase in customer growth in Q3 as well as traction and adoption with some of the biggest and most innovative companies in finance," Shaulov said. "The digital asset market is evolving rapidly and it's happening simultaneously, all around the world. With the new injection of capital, we will be able to continue to grow our in-house R&D, marketing and sales talent to continue pushing the envelope on product innovation, and customer growth in key geographic regions."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 22, 2020
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