ConsenSys, a blockchain solution developer, has reached a $7bn valuation after the close of a $450m investment round.
The capital injection was supplied by first-time ConsenSys backers Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures. Existing backers Third Point, Marshall Wace, TRUE Capital Management, and UTA VC, United Talent Agency’s venture fund also joined the round.
The fresh equity will be converted into ETH to rebalance the ratio of ETH to USD-equivalents in line with ConsenSys’ treasury strategy. It claims this will bolster its “ultra sound money” position in advance of Ethereum’s upcoming merge to proof of stake.
ConsenSys has a significant treasury of ETH, stablecoins and other crypto tokens and is using its own financial infrastructure to put the assets to work in DeFi protocols and via staking.
This capital injection will also aid its rapid expansion of MetaMask, its self-custodial wallet. It has a major redesign planned for this year and has a rollout of a plug-in extensibility system that will enable the integration with a selection of blockchain protocols and schemes.
It also hopes it can accelerate the global adoption of its development tool suite and its efforts to drive NFT adoption for artists, content creators, brands, intellectual property owners, game publishers, and sports leagues.
The FinTech company’s mission is to unlock the collaborative power of communities by making DAOs, NFTs, and DeFi universally easy to use, access and build on. It offers blockchain solutions for asset management, capital markets, payments and more.
ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin said, “I think of ConsenSys as a broad and deep capabilities machine for the decentralised protocols ecosystem, able to rapidly capitalise at scale on fundamental new constructs that emerge, such as developer tooling, tokenization, token launches, wallets, security audits, DeFi (1.0, 2.0 and beyond), NFTs, bridges, Layer-2 scaling, DAOs, and more.
“This round takes in digital assets as well as fiat and converts immediately to ETH. Next round will be our ‘Series ETH’ where we will assist investors in getting fully crypto native to contribute ETH as a symbol of and commitment to the ongoing paradigm shift.”
Sullivan & Cromwell served as the legal advisor to the deal.
ConsenSys previously raised $65m in an investment from JP Morgan, Mastercard Inc and UBS Group in 2021.
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