Axelar, a decentralized network that connects application builders with blockchain ecosystems, applications and users, has successfully completed a $35 million USD Series B funding round, bringing its market valuation to $1 billion USD. This latest funding infusion follows the company’s previous $25 million Series A funding round in mid-2021 and $3.75 million in seed funding secured in 2020.
Co-founded in 2020 by Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Sergey Gorbunov, who also serves as CEO, Axelar gives developers the ability to build on the best platform for their needs while using Axelar’s connectivity to allow blockchains to communicate with each other seamlessly.
Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Sergey Gorbunov builds systems and protocols that protect data and information in untrusted, distributed, and highly adversarial environments such as in cloud computing or blockchains. His research enables new types of applications that have built-in trust and security properties and allows users to share, exchange, and compute information without having to trust each other or any third party.
With this latest round of funding with investments from Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital, North Island Ventures, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Cygni Capital, Lemniscap, Olive Tree Capital, Blockchange Ventures, Node Capital, and angel investors including Waikit Lau and Gokul Rajaram, amongst others, Axelar will continue to grow its network, while laying down foundations for Web3 — a new iteration of the World Wide Web based on blockchain technology.
“Lack of scalable interoperability is the blockchain industry’s biggest obstacle to date, preventing mainstream adoption,” said Professor Gorbunov. “It’s great to see the support from our existing and new investors that see Axelar network as the core infrastructure stack that will accelerate the growth of the entire ecosystem.”
Blockchains are used as digital ledgers for cryptocurrencies as well as many other applications where an immutable ledger is needed to keep track of records and transactions securely. Despite their many uses, blockchains are at an early stage of development and many core infrastructure elements are still missing. A particularly important element for widespread adoption is the ability to connect different blockchain systems. This is precisely what Axelar addresses — building a network, along with the protocols and tools, to easily connect different blockchain ecosystems.
“As we move forward into 2022, there are more blockchain networks than ever before, and mass adoption has begun,” said Professor Gorbunov. “It’s critical that these chains are developed to communicate with one another so that assets such as tokens, NFTs and smart contract information can be transferred between chains. We see the demand ahead and have a huge opportunity to accelerate blockchain space by connecting siloed blockchains.”