Fireblocks raises $550 million in Series E funding, now valued at $8 billion

Fireblocks, an institutional crypto custody provider, has raised $550 million in a mega Series E round and is now valued at $8 billion.

D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital co-led the round, with General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Mammoth, CapitalG (Alphabet’s independent growth fund), Altimeter, and ParaFi Capital also participating.

Existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Ribbit, Bank of New York Mellon, Paradigm, and SCB10x, also joined the round.

The Series E round comes just five months after Fireblocks raised $310 million in Series D funding at a $2.2 billion valuation. The company’s valuation has soared over ten times in the last year, from $700 million to $8 billion today.

Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov told The Block in an interview that the company has seen “phenomenal financial results” in the past year, with the number of customers growing from 150 to over 800 and revenues growing over 600%. Shaulov declined to provide absolute revenue numbers but said the firm isn’t profitable yet.

Growing fast

Founded in 2018, Fireblocks provides institutions with an all-in-one platform that includes crypto services such as custody, access to decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, and tokenization. Fireblocks says it has $45 billion in assets under custody and over $2 trillion in crypto assets have been transferred securely through its platform.

Its customers include Bank of New York Mellon, Revolut, Galaxy Digital, BlockFi, Deribit, eToro, CoinShares, Three Arrows Capital, and B2C2. Shaulov said Fireblocks will continue to enhance its offerings and add more customers with fresh capital in hand.

Earlier this month, Fireblocks became the first whitelister for Aave Arc, a permissioned version of the popular DeFi lending platform Aave. In other words, Fireblocks runs due diligence on institutions looking to participate in Aave Arc for lending and borrowing crypto assets to earn a higher yield.

Shaulov said Fireblocks is looking to support more permissioned DeFi protocols as and when they launch. As for its general DeFi services, Fireblocks is looking to support more blockchains such as Terra, said Shaulov. Last week, the firm added support for Solana.

To continue expanding its operations, Fireblocks is also looking to double its current headcount of 300 to 600 in the near future, said Shaulov. The firm grew its team size from around 70 people to 300 people in the last year.

The Series E round brings Fireblocks’ total funding to date to over $1 billion. Shaulov said the firm isn’t looking to raise more funds for the next 18 months. When asked for any IPO plans, Shaulov said Fireblocks is still young, and when it does decide to go public, it could tokenize its shares rather than going for a conventional IPO.

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