CertiK, a web3 and blockchain security company, has raised $88 million in its latest round, bringing its valuation to $2 billion.
The oversubscribed Series B3 financing round has doubled the company’s valuation in three months. The company has raised a total of $230 million to date.
“We have raised four rounds in the past nine months and the valuation has grown more than 10 times,” Ronghui Gu, founder and CEO of CertiK, told TechCrunch. “We haven’t touched any money in the past four rounds. The money is in the bank and the reason is because CertiK is a profitable business.”
However, Gu said that the funds will be used to build new products and “a one-stop security platform for the entire web3 world.”
The capital raise was led by Insight Partners, Tiger Global and Advent International. Goldman Sachs also participated alongside existing investors like Sequoia and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
In general, demand for blockchain security has increased as the crypto sector faces extensive losses of funds due to exploits and fraud. In the first quarter of 2022, a “loss” of over $1.23 billion transpired across the web3 ecosystem, according to a report by web3 bug bounty and security services platform Immunefi.
“More than $1 billion was lost in the first quarter because all the hackers are targeting the web3 world at the moment,” Gu said. “This industry is still young and different from Web 2.0. The web3 world has a small group of developers who may not be able to always secure the software or code and that’s why the industry is facing cyber risks.”
To date, CertiK has protected over $300 billion worth of crypto assets for 2,500 enterprise clients through its auditing and fraud investigation services, among other offerings, the company stated. The firm’s revenue rose 12x and profits increased 3,000 times in 2021, Gu said.
“As we see continued growth in use cases and assets on decentralized applications the solutions being built by Certik will be integral to securing the ecosystem, helping to accelerate innovation and adoption of these novel technologies.” Oli Harris, head of North America digital assets at Goldman Sachs, said in a statement.
