Messari CEO Ryan Selkis Hints Towards Plan To Raise $35m In Fresh Financing

08/11/2022

2 minutes read

2022.08.11 04:10

Messari, the crypto-centric market intelligence platform, recently released a report giving an overview of fundraising totals so far in the year, as the company’s CEO Ryan Selkis hinted on the plan to raise $35m in financing at a $300m evaluation.

Selkis tweeted saying, “I don’t comment on market rumors related to Messari, but, we’ve scaled to 130 people on zero net operating burn, had a record July, and are hiring $35m worth of developers to help bring transparency and institutional-grade data tool to the crypto market.”

I don’t comment on market rumors related to Messari, but…We’ve scaled to 130 people on zero net operating burn, had a record July, and are hiring $35mm worth of developers to help bring transparency and institutional-grade data tool to the crypto market.

— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) August 9, 2022

Last year, the company grew from a team of 35 to a team of 75, as Selkis aimed to “triple in size particularly the product engineering side and expanding the analyst hub to include 1,000 contract analysts.”

CeFi: The King Of Capital

Claiming to bring transparency to the crypto-economy, New York-based Messari said that centralized finance (CeFi) had been the king of capital so far, reigning in $10.3B in the first six months of the year, with almost half of all funding rounds totalling more than $10M.

Furthermore, according to Messari’s report, decentralized finance (DeFi) ended the first half of the year on a strong note by raising $624m in the month of June, more than two times as much as any month in the past six months.

Messari Acquires Dove Metrics

The company revealed that it has recently acquired Dove Metrics, crypto’s leading fundraising database that tracks crypto-funding rounds and the investments of venture capital firms, hedge funds and investment decentralized autonomous organizations.

In its report, Messari stated that Dove has more than 3200 funding rounds and 8000 investors tracked. “It is led by Regan Bozman and Pierre Chuzeville, who also run Lattice (OTC:LTTC), an early-stage crypto venture capital fund,” the report said.

1/ Today we’re incredibly excited to share that @MessariCrypto has acquired Dove Metrics assets. The Messari Team will integrate the assets into their data and research product.

— Dove Metrics (@dovemetrics) August 2, 2022

On the Flipside

The company has not made its intention to raise fresh funding public yet.
This would be one of the biggest rounds of funding for Messari.

Why You Should Care

Last year, billionaire Steve Cohen’s investment firm, Point72 Ventures, was one of the main backers of Messari as it helped the company raise $21m. The company said that the fund was “to triple its engineering and research headcount, expand its market intelligence platform and launch new token governance tools.”