Kaiko, a cryptocurrency data provider, said on Tuesday that it had raised $53 million in a Series B funding round . According to the press release, the round was led by Eight Roads, whose participation included Revaia and existing investors like Alven, Point9, Anthemis and Underscore.
A spokesperson for Kaiko declined to disclose exact figures but said the series B deal tripled the company’s valuation from June 2021. “What was challenging, in all honesty, was the due diligence and closing process because we were really, really under scrutiny. They went into many, many details to make sure that there was barely any risk in the investment,” Ambre Soubiran, Kaiko’s Chief Executive Officer, commented during an interview with Bloomberg.
Providing market data, pricing services, indices and industry research to clients and partners like Deutsche Boerse, ICE Global Network, Messari and Paxos, Kaiko serves institutional investors and businesses. Pascal Gauthier founded the company in 2014 before being acquired by Soubiran, a former HSBC banker now the CEO of the crypto hardware firm, Ledger.
“Building the narrative around the series B pitch was not the hardest part. The hardest part was getting the whole thing across the finish line in the middle of a minus 80 percent downturn,” Soubiran noted. According to Soubiran, Kaiko has benefited from the crypto meltdown as customers want to know why prices are falling. During the current crisis, she noted a sharp increase in leads for new clients.
Eight Roads Perspectives
Eight Roads’ Alston Zecha, who handled the fund’s investment in Kaiko, said the crypto industry has matured over the past seven years since he first presented an overview of the industry to colleagues and senior executives at Fidelity International.
"When you speak to most VCs, yes, they are potentially slowing down their pace of deployment, but they're not saying 'no' for really promising companies. The phrase that VCs use is the bar is higher,” Zecha pointed out.
