Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis has closed a new funding round that garnered the company an additional $100 million from various investors. The enterprise is now valued at a whopping $2 billion, which is double what the company was valued at just a few months ago.
Chainalysis Closes Its $100 Million Funding Round
The funding round was headed by Paradigm, a crypto-centered venture capital firm. Money also came from the likes of Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, who saw his funds delivered to Chainalysis through Time Ventures. Further shares in the company were bought by the likes of Addition and Ribbit, two firms that already hold heavy stakes in the blockchain analysis company.
Chainalysis has been around for seven years and was founded in 2014. The company’s primary operations are designed to assist governments, regulators and the private sector detect any sort of fraudulent crypto-based activity and stop it in its tracks. At the time of writing, the company faces heavy competition from the likes of Cipher Trace, which is based in California, and London’s Elliptic.
In the past, Chainlysis has been tasked with several bitcoin cases and tracked over $1 million in fraudulent crypto funds linked to Silk Road black market sales. Michael Gronager is the company’s CEO and co-founder. In a recent interview, he explains that the money Chainalysis recently earned has a lot to do with the fact that crypto is on many people’s minds as of late given how strong bitcoin has been doing and how much its price continues to surge.
It used to be that retailers primarily controlled the bitcoin space, but institutional traders such as Tesla have really paved the way for heavier access amongst companies and billion-dollar firms to get involved. He states:
When we raised our last round, we were basically seeing a lot of that in its infancy. What we see right now is that the market is growing and that some often traditional players are embracing crypto in a way that we haven’t seen before… What has changed over the last four months is the opportunity and the speed by which we will grow into more customers and more revenue has simply gone up. That means we need to do a lot more building now.
Using the Money To Grow Even Further
Per the company’s LinkedIn page, Chainalysis has grown heavily over just the past year alone. The firm now employs more than 230 people and is looking to hire several hundred more with the money it’s earned through this latest funding round. The company is also looking to expand its compliance efforts and blockchain analysis protocols, with Gronager claiming:
We are involved in conversations with regulators in the US and the rest of the world. What is important to note is that this space has changed a lot and the amount of criminal activity is dropping a lot.
