Fireblocks announced a $133 million Series C funding round led by Coatue, Ribbit, and Stripes with strategic investment from BNY Mellon and Silicon Valley Bank, bringing total raised to date to $179 million. Fireblocks is a digital asset custody, transfer and settlement platform.
Early adopters included Genesis Global Trading and Galaxy Digital when Fireblocks launched in 2018, and the company has now secured millions of wallets for 200+ customers and transferred $400 billion in digital assets.
The funding round is expected to be used for large-scale expansion of resources to help replatform the financial system to digital assets. The company said in a statement they plan to remain an independent technology partner to top-tier financial institutions to support their transformation and service the market horizontally.
“Fintechs and banks require not only a specialized custody and settlement infrastructure to ensure customers funds are safely managed, but a platform that enables new lines of digital offerings,” said Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, in a statement. “While we have no plans to become a bank, we believe our infrastructure will lend itself perfectly to power an entirely new era of financial services.”
BNY Mellon’s CEO of Asset Servicing and head of Digital, Roman Regelman, said in a statement: “Developing products to bridge digital and traditional assets is foundational to the future of custody. Following significant due diligence and market research, we recognize Fireblocks as a market leader in providing secure technology to support digital asset services.”
Fireblocks infrastructure helps banks and fintechs build “direct custody” solutions within their organizations. The direct custody model (or providing custody for your own digital assets, utilizing your own internal scale and balance sheet) means that financial institutions can provide their customers with compliance operations and security.