Ledger Raises $75 Million in Series B Funding Round
After selling a million hardware wallets in 2017, the firm is now targeting banks and hedge funds.
The France-based cryptocurrency-storing hardware wallet manufacturing firm Ledger has raised $75 million (61 million euroד) in a Series B funding round.
The round was led by the UK-headquartered venture capital firm Draper Esprit. The names of the investors include FirstMark Capital, Cathay Innovation, and Korelya Capital. Ledger’s existing investors – CapHorn Invest, GDTRE and Digital Currency Group – also participated in the funding round. According to Ledger, the round was oversubscribed.
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Ledger had its first fundraising last year. It raised $7 million.
The interesting thing about Ledger is that within only a few of years of its launch it is already turning a profit – a very unusual thing in the startup industry. The firm reported a revenue of 46 million euros in 2017 grossing from the US, Europe, and Asia, while in 2016, the figure was a mere 600,000 euros. The sales figures completely back this growth, as in 2017 alone the firm sold 1 million units of its hardware wallets, compared to only 3,000 in the previous year.
The growing crypto craze is the key to Ledger’s success. Also, the security concerns of storing valuable crypto assets within software wallets drove investors to get a hardware wallet. And this is where Ledger came in, providing a thumb drive-based hardware wallet with added security features designed to store cryptocurrencies.
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The high demand for the hardware wallet has created a massive backlog of orders for the company. Currently, there is a waiting period of over a month.
With the raised money, the company aims to increase production and expand its business worldwide.
Coindesk quoted Eric Larcheveque, CEO of Ledger: “These funds will be used to keep investing significantly in R&D while scaling our operations and deploying our teams globally.”
The company also wants to move towards providing a software solution for financial firms. It is planning to introduce Ledger Vault, a security solution which can be used by banks, hedge funds, and other corporations.
“Eventually we’ll be able to put our software on other hardware – that’s a hint at our future roadmap,” said Larcheveque.
“Ultimately we want to be a technology giant securing bitcoin and blockchain infrastructure,” he added.
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