(This Feb. 26 story has been corrected to change the year of Franklin’s mutual fund launch to 2021, from last year, in paragraph 4)
By Niket Nishant
(Reuters) – Blockchain technology start-up Avail said on Monday it had raised $27 million for its early-stage funding round led by billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and crypto investment firm Dragonfly Capital.
Venture capital firms SevenX, Figment, Nomad Capital and others also participated in the round, according to Avail.
Resurgence in the popularity of cryptocurrencies has rekindled interest in the technology underpinning the industry like blockchain, a digital ledger for recording and verifying transactions.
With its promise of transparency, the technology has even found backers in the traditional finance industry. Financial services firm Franklin Templeton launched a mutual fund on a blockchain in 2021 to speed up the settlements process and lower costs.
Avail began in 2020 under crypto firm Polygon Labs, before being spun off last year. The company’s technology allows customers to build their own blockchains quickly.
The company is led by former Polygon executives Anurag Arjun and Prabal Banerjee. It did not disclose a valuation at which the latest funds were raised.
The funds would be used for product development, hiring and marketing, Avail co-founder Arjun said.
Arjun also highlighted the significance of the regulatory approval for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to the industry. The move could bring more awareness about the “cutting-edge technology” in the space, he said.
“Bitcoin is a flag-bearer of the space. For it to gain some sort of legitimacy in institutional and regulatory circles, drives capital to the industry and benefits start-ups like us,” he said.
The private fundraising environment has been muted so far, despite venture firms signing big checks for some artificial intelligence start-ups.
Last year, $170.6 billion was invested across venture capital deals in the U.S., nearly 30% lower than the prior year, according to data from PitchBook.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Pooja Desai)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.