Canadian blockchain infrastructure and services provider Figment raised $110 million in Series C funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. The announcement closely follows the firm’s $50 million Series B, closed in August, which valued the company at $500 million.
Revealed exclusively to Forbes, the current round was led by software investment firm Thoma Bravo, with participation from Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Binance Labs, ParaFi Capital, Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC (the parent company of Fidelity Investments), CMS Holdings, Franklin Templeton, and StarkWare, among others.
The investment brings Figment’s total capital raised to date to approximately $165 million.
Launched in 2018, the Toronto-based firm supports the Web 3.0 ecosystem by making it easy for investors to stake their tokens, earn yield and participate in blockchain governance across more than 50 networks, including Ethereum (still on track to full PoS transition) Cardano, Solana and Polkadot.
Competing with other staking-focused platforms like Blockdaemon, Everstake, Chorus One and staking services offered by crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken, Figment says that it has staked over $7.5 billion in assets while expanding its institutional client base from 31 to more than 130 this year. Among Figment’s largest customers are Coinbase, Crypto.com, Anchorage, The Graph and Ether Capital.
“Figment’s rapid growth over the past few years combined with its institutional focus from both a technological and service perspective sets Figment apart as a highly strategic player poised for significant scale,” said Tre Sayle, partner at Thoma Bravo (lead investor in the round), in e-mailed comments.
While “increasing hiring and headcount is the number one priority” for the fast growing firm, said Figment’s cofounder and CEO, Lorien Gabel, the new capital should also help it to become much more involved in the overall development of Web 3.0, which will in turn increase demand for staking.
Figment plans to develop its DataHub 2.0 platform, designed to remove the complexities of building on Web 3 blockchains. The funds “will also go toward supporting and expanding our 50+ protocols network, as well as Figment’s investment arm, which is focused on fostering the development of new decentralized protocols and applications,” Gabel added.
The startup’s own $17.5 million investment fund, Figment Capital, launched in April and has since invested in teams and networks with a focus on proof-of-stake consensus models, interoperability, and privacy. Investments include Osmosis, decentralized exchange based on the Cosmos network, crypto staking protocol Obol and Ethereum scaling and privacy engine zkSync, among others.
Read full story on Forbes