'AWS for Blockchains' Alchemy Closes $80M Funding Round at $505M Valuation
Alchemy powers most of DeFi and almost all the big NFT platforms. The round was co-led by Coatue Management.
:format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/QEMGHGOQVRE45GPBQKG7ZCWKJI.jpg)
Left to right: Joe Lau, Alchemy co-founder, and chief technology officer; Nikil Viswanathan, Alchemy co-founder and CEO; John Hennessy, Google chairman and Alchemy investor
Alchemy, which is fast becoming the blockchain world’s version of Amazon Web Services (AWS), has raised $80 million.
Alchemy’s ubiquitous infrastructure and developer platform has grown since its public launch eight months ago to reach a $505 million valuation, CEO Nikil Viswanathan said in an interview.
The round was co-led by Coatue Management, the tech investment manager led by hedge fund maven Philippe Laffont. Coatue also led a $305 million funding round in March for Dapper Labs, one of Alchemy’s customers.
Also involved in the Alchemy round was Addition, the $1.3 billion fund launched last year by tech investor Lee Fixel. Other notable participants include electro-pop duo The Chainsmokers and the Glazer family, who own the Manchester United soccer team and the National Football League’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The funding round in Alchemy represents one of the larger blockchain infrastructure bets in recent memory.
The Series B, which brings Alchemy’s total funding to $96 million, also included previous investors Stanford University, Coinbase Ventures and Communitas Capital.
“Alchemy has created the essential infrastructure needed to develop applications on top of the blockchain,” Fixel told CoinDesk via email. “They will play a powerful role in pushing forward the pace of innovation in the blockchain ecosystem in the years ahead.”
Alchemy’s reach
Alchemy’s suite of cloud-based infrastructure, tailored to decentralized apps, powers over $30 billion worth of transactions a year, Viswanathan said, and supports almost all the non-fungible token platforms in existence today.
Viswanathan and Joe Lau, both Forbes “30 Under 30” computer science graduates from Stanford, founded the company in 2017, and its technology was in beta testing until last August.
“Whenever you have a new industry, whether it's a computer or the internet or blockchain, you always need this developer platform layer,” Viswanathan said, adding:
Back-end boosters
Competitors include platforms such as ConsenSys-owned Infura and Truffle. Following the trend toward lower-fee and less-congested alternatives to Ethereum, Alchemy is working with Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain and has “a bunch of other chains” to be announced in the coming weeks, Viswanathan said.
“On the multi-chain side, we've put in all this work over the last three years to grow the Ethereum developer ecosystem with developers tools and infrastructure,” Lau said in an interview. “Now other ecosystems are starting to think about their developers and are looking at what we’ve done and saying, ‘Hey, we want what you’ve done for Ethereum on our blockchain as well.’”
Jerry Yang, a founding partner at AME Cloud Ventures and a Yahoo co-founder who also invested in the round, added via email:
DISCLOSURE
Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.
The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG.
Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk’s longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.