Anchorage: Portuguese-led crypto active company raises $350 million and gains "unicorn" status
Expresso
· 15 Dec 2021
The crypto active custodian company has raised $350 million on the market in a Series D round led by US fund KKR. Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of the San Francisco-based company, says he wants to continue investing in national talent
Anchorage announced Wednesday that it has raised 350 million dollars (about 309 million euros) in a Series D funding round, an investment that values the cryptocurrency custodian co-founded by the Portuguese Diogo Mónica at $3 billion (2.7 billion euros).
In a statement, Anchorage said it is the first "unicorn" (companies valued at over a billion dollars) in the crypto active area with Portuguese DNA.
The round was led by private equity fund KKR - currently in the process of buying Telecom Italia, and a possible future buyer of Altice's Portuguese operation, Meo - and included US funds Andreessen Horowitz, Wellington Management and Apollo, and investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Other investors include funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Blockchain Capital, Delta Blockchain Fund, Elad Gil, GIC, GoldenTree Asset Management, Innovius Capital, Kraken, Lux Capital, PayPal Ventures, Senator Investment Group, Standard Investments, Thoma Bravo, and Wellington Management.
Anchorage also counts with Portuguese capital through Indico Capital Management, a venture capital fund led by the former Talkdesk Cristina Fonseca and former Caixa Capital Stephan de Morais. Indico participated in the Series C round earlier this year, in which the 'crypto' company raised $80 million (€71 million).
This is a first for the US-based KKR, which is thus investing in a digital asset company for the first time through direct equity investment via the Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, focused on the technology space, as the statement stresses.
"As more and more institutions look to add crypto services to their offerings, we find ourselves at an inflexion point. This funding puts Anchorage Digital in a comfortable position to meet the unprecedented institutional demand from this rapidly evolving market", says Diogo Mónica, quoted in a statement.
The president of Anchorage, one of many companies in the crypto active market that is reaching billion dollars’ valuations, quickly placing them in the coveted 'unicorn' zone, says he intends to "continue to bet on Portuguese talent", noting that "the growth of institutional adoption of crypto active products demonstrates the impact they are having on the traditional financial system in the world, in general, and in Portugal, more specifically".
