Less than a year after raising an $80 million Series C round, Anchorage is announcing that it has raised a $350 million Series D round. With today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of more than $3 billion.
Anchorage offers a custody solution for big institutions, such as publicly traded companies or funds. On top of that, Anchorage lets you trade crypto assets, stake assets to earn returns and participate in protocol governance if you own a lot of tokens for a specific protocol.
For instance, one transaction has been particularly commented. Back in August, Visa acquired a CryptoPunk for 49.5 ETH. At the time, it represented around $150,000. Behind the scenes, Anchorage handled the transaction for Visa.
KKR is leading the round, with many, many different investors also participating. So take a deep breath and try to read this sentence out loud in one try: Goldman Sachs, Alameda Research, Andreessen Horowitz, Apollo credit funds, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Blockchain Capital, Delta Blockchain Fund, Elad Gil, GIC, GoldenTree Asset Management, Innovius Capital, Kraken, Lux Capital, PayPal Ventures, Senator Investment Group, Standard Investments, Thoma Bravo and Wellington Management
You may wonder why such a big group of investors want to put some money in Anchorage. That’s because Anchorage received a federal banking charter, turning it into a digital asset bank. It differentiates Anchorage from many custodian products out there.
With today’s funding round, the company plans to improve its product, especially for global financial firms and other fintech companies. Customers can also expect more features with more integrations with DeFi products.
“As a pioneer in enabling institutional investors to access digital assets, Anchorage has built a best in class, institutional grade digital asset platform that combines the best practices of both modern security and usability. We are thrilled to lead this Series D round and work with Diogo, Nathan and their talented team as they continue to support the institutional adoption of digital assets through their differentiated, regulated and integrated suite of solutions,” KKR’s Technology Growth Equity senior leader Ben Pederson said in a statement.
Over the past year, Anchorage has increased its number of clients by 96%. The company’s headcount has also increased by quite a lot with a 175% jump compared to the same period last year.
With its federal banking charter, Anchorage has a good barrier to entry in case other companies want to compete in the same space. As companies realize that crypto assets are more than a fad, they’ll increasingly look for trustworthy partners to interact with the crypto ecosystem. And some of them will certainly end up working with Anchorage.
Disclosure: I own small amounts of various cryptocurrencies.