Funding round takes Chainalysis value up to $8.6 billion
Blockchain data platform Chainalysis has completed a $170 million Series F financing led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, bringing its valuation to $8.6 billion.
Previous investors – Accel, Blackstone, Dragoneer, and FundersClub – increased their stake in the company, and the Bank of New York Mellon and Emergence Capital also participated.
Chainalysis is now the largest enterprise SaaS company in the cryptocurrency industry, and says it will use the funds to continue to invest in product innovation and scale its global operations to meet customer demand as the asset class gains mainstream acceptance.
While government bodies have long realised the importance of blockchain data and analysis, in the past year the demand for risk management and business intelligence solutions from exchanges and DeFi platforms scaling their businesses and financial institutions entering the cryptocurrency space reached new highs.
Over the past year, Chainalysis has:
- Increased its customer count by 75% and now has more than 750 customers in 70 countries.
- Doubled its private sector customer base and tripled its financial services customer base, and now counts more than 100 financial institutions as customers.
- Increased the number of customers that account for more than $100k in annual recurring revenue by 75% to 150 customers.
Business momentum and customer successes
As the cryptocurrency industry has evolved and expanded since Chainalysis raised its Series E financing in June 2021, the company has partnered with new types of customers including NFT platforms like Dapper Labs, fintech companies like Robinhood, and traditional financial institutions like the Bank of New York Mellon, Cross River Bank, and Commonwealth Bank (CBA) in Australia. Business grew across regions, with Asia Pacific in particular experiencing a breakout year in 2021 and more than doubling revenue and customer count. As the company scales, it has maintained a customer satisfaction NPS score of 80%+.
Chainalysis customers also had huge success disrupting criminal activity and recovering funds. In November 2021, the IRS Criminal Investigations announced that it had seized over $3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021 — all from non-tax investigations — representing 93% of all funds seized by the division during that time period. Other successes include the $2.3 million seized from the ransomware group behind the Colonial Pipeline attack, and OFAC’s sanctioning of two Russia-based cryptocurrency services heavily involved in money laundering.
Product development
Chainalysis is continuing to invest in building out its data platform to support new and enhanced risk management and business intelligence tools. Recent enhancements include:
- Deepened data advantage: Blockchain analysis tools are only as good as the underlying dataset, and Chainalysis now offers extensive DeFi identifications including 100% coverage of the Top 15 DEX liquidity pools, and improved coverage of lending and oracle protocols and yield-aggregators.
- Launched cross-chain graphing: With the increase in the number of blockchains — and of smart contracts that make them interoperable — Chainalysis Cross-Chain Investigations makes it easy for investigators to navigate this complicated ecosystem in a single graph.
- Expanded transaction monitoring capabilities: Chainalysis now screens on average $1 Trillion in transaction value each month across all cryptocurrency assets, enabling our customers to more quickly list new assets safely.
- Achieved SOC2 Type II Certification: Chainalysis completed its second compliance audit for the KYT and Reactor products, attesting to its successful implementation of controls in both the Security and Availability trust service criteria.
Team growth
Over the past year, Chainalysis has hired more than 450 people, and now has over 700 employees. To support the company’s continued growth and strengthen its operational functions, Chainalysis recently hired executives across functions, including:
- Sari Granat, President and Chief Operating Officer: Granat was previously EVP, Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel at IHS Markit, where she led and scaled the data, analytics and technology company’s legal, compliance, enterprise risk, information security, and information technology functions through 10 years of growth and transformation.
- W Thomas Stanley, President and Chief Revenue Officer: Stanley was previously CRO at Tanium, where he drove hypergrowth to greater than $500M in ARR, while building out international markets as well as the partner sales organization.
- Mikaela Smith, Global VP of Talent Acquisition: Smith has been focused on globally scaling companies through hypergrowth for the last 11 years at Slack and Twitter, launching and operationalizing innovative diversity-focused programs while building out next generation Talent functions.
- Caroline Malcolm, Head of International Policy: Malcolm joins after 12 years at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), most recently as the Head of its Global Blockchain Policy Centre.
“Over the past year, the cryptocurrency industry crossed into the mainstream with financial institutions entering the space and new technologies like NFTs disrupting traditional markets,” said Michael Gronager, co-founder and CEO, Chainalysis.
“Our partners at GIC understand the power of Chainalysis’ data platform and customer network, the strength of our team of leaders, and the market opportunity before us. I’m thrilled to deepen our relationship with their team, especially as we expand our business in the APAC region.”
Choo Yong Cheen, Chief Investment Officer of Private Equity at GIC, commented: “Chainalysis is in a unique position of running a SaaS business in the cryptocurrency space due to the stability of its business model as well as the increasing demand for trust and safety in the overall industry.
“We are pleased to expand our partnership and look forward to their next stage of growth.”
Roman Regelman, CEO of Securities Services & Digital for BNY Mellon, described his firm’s investment in Chainalysis as” a natural progression of an already meaningful and productive alliance”.
“BNY Mellon is a leader in financial market innovation, and collaborating with established firms in the digital asset ecosystem, like Chainalysis, is a key pillar in our strategy,” he said.
Chainalysis has more than 370 open positions across all functions and geographies.
The company is also set to host its annual Links New York on May 18 and 19. Register for the livestream here.