(Reuters) – Blockchain technology firm ConsenSys said on Tuesday its valuation had more than doubled to over $7 billion after its latest funding round that included investments from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Microsoft.
ConsenSys, founded by Joseph Lubin, is an Ethereum blockchain firm whose products help developers, enterprises and users build applications geared towards the so-called “Web3” space.
“Web3” is used to describe a potential next phase of the internet: a decentralized web run on the record-keeping technology blockchain.
The company, which raised $450 million in the latest round, said it would use the funds to expand its MetaMask offering with a redesign, expected to release later this year. MetaMask is a crypto wallet used to buy, sell and swap tokens.
Investors in the new round led by ParaFi Capital also included Singapore’s Temasek, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures.
ConsenSys said it intends to convert all funds from the round to ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, to rebalance the ratio of ETH to U.S. dollar-equivalents in line with the company’s treasury strategy. Lubin has contributed heavily to the development of the cryptocurrency.
ConsenSys, which was valued at $3.2 billion in its last funding round in November, joins a growing list of crypto companies whose valuations have jumped in recent months driven by the explosion of interest in “Web3” and with the launch of marketplaces for non-fungible tokens (NFT).
Earlier this year, “Web3” developer platform Alchemy nearly tripled its valuation to $10.2 billion after a funding round led by Lightspeed and Silver Lake.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
