CertiK, the cybersecurity startup, raises $80 million in a Series B2 financing round led by Sequoia.
The latest funding round for Certik also seen participation from existing investors including Tiger Global, Coatue Management, and GL Ventures (Hillhouse Capital’s VC arm).
The Largest Investment Round In Blockchain Security Space Advances Certik Towards A Unicorn Status
The new funding of Certik is not only the largest single round of fundraising in the blockchain security space but also brings CertiK’s valuation to nearly $1 Billion. This is the third round of capital raised by CertiK within four months, altogether totaling just over $140M.
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What Certik Does?
Founded by Ronghui Gu and Zhong Shao, CertiK is a leader in Smart Contract and Blockchain security. Starting with blockchain, CertiK applies cutting-edge innovations from academia into enterprise, enabling mission-critical applications to be built with security and correctness.
In addition to blockchain and smart contract auditing and formal verification through its Security Leaderboard platform, CertiK launched Skynet, the first 24/7, active-monitoring platform. Skynet monitors and protects smart contracts as well as blockchains against sophisticated security threats.
As the security threat landscape continues to evolve, Skynet’s strategy is to utilize large amounts of on-chain and off-chain machine learning data. With this data Skynet can adapt and evolve, to protect smart contracts and blockchains against new threats. Both Security Leaderboard and Skynet are seeing incredible growth. Since the end of 2020, Skynet’s booked revenue has grown 2,300%, and the total number of users on the Security Leaderboard has grown 2,000%.
Headquartered in New York City, CertiK was founded by computer science professors at Yale University and Columbia University. CertiK is backed by industry leaders, including Sequoia, Coatue Management, Tiger Global, GL Ventures (Hillhouse Capital’s venture arm), Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Lightspeed, and others.
Demand For Blockchain Security Growing
There has been a substantial increase in demand for blockchain security in the past few years – mostly driven by recent blockchain hacks, and stolen cryptocurrency.
According to a new report from crypto asset risk management firm Elliptic, losses due to theft and fraud in DeFi space are accelerating, with losses totaling $10.5 billion in 2021 to date, up from $1.5 billion in 2020.
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CertiK revealed that it has experienced incredible growth over the past year, increasing revenues by 20x and its headcount by 4x. To date, CertiK has provided security products and services to over 1,800 clients, detected over 31,000 vulnerabilities in blockchain code, and protected over $310 billion worth of digital assets.
“Blockchain security is an indispensable link in the commercial value chain overall. We are very proud to invest in CertiK, which is deeply involved in this field. This is an important addition to our global blockchain investment landscape. We believe that CertiK can create synergies with other companies we have invested in. Our goal is that Sequoia can provide CertiK with resources to jointly develop the blockchain security market.”
Sequoia Spokesperson
Certik To Invest In More Innovative Blockchain Security Solutions
Certik intends to use the new funds along with the revenue generated from both Skynet and Security Leaderboard, will be used for the development and operation of more innovative products.
CertiK Co-founder, Professor Ronghui Gu, said:
“Smart contract auditing and formal verification are the first steps in a blockchain security service. CertiK’s goal will be to develop more SaaS products to provide additional security benefits for clients. This includes security auditing, formal verification, monitoring, detection, as well as protection of client blockchain and smart contracts.”
Certik Brings On Board The Best Talent In The Filed
CertiK also pointed out that it was bringing the best talent in this field to lead the company.
The blockchain security firm mentioned that Dr. David Tarditi, who recently joined CertiK as Vice President of Engineering, has over 16 years of experience growing and leading engineering and research teams at Microsoft. He is also the inventor and co-inventor of 22 patents and has carried out research on typed intermediate languages, which gives compiler developers proof of compiler phases maintaining key correctness properties of input source code.
In addition, Monier Jalal, who has over 20 years of leadership in the cybersecurity space, has also joined CertiK as Vice President of Marketing. Mr. Jalal has helped companies successfully market and launch products and has been part of the founder and executive leadership team driving the growth, acquisition, and IPO for several cybersecurity startups.
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