Main Highlights:
- As more proof that web3 is not a passing trend, blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy announced today the close of a $200 million Series C1 fundraising round, valuing the company at $10.2 billion.
- Alchemy’s latest fundraising round, led by current investor Lightspeed Venture Partners and new investor private equity firm Silver Lake, brings the company’s total funding to $545.5 million since its inception in 2017.
- Over the last 12 months, the business noted that NFT marketplaces based on Alchemy had paid out over $1.5 billion in royalties to artists, including over $1 billion in the previous three months alone.
As more evidence that web3 is not a fleeting fad, blockchain infrastructure firm Alchemy announced today the completion of a $200 million Series C1 funding round, valuing the business at $10.2 billion. For those unfamiliar, web3 is a term that refers to a decentralized web built on the blockchain. Told, Alchemy aspires to be the AWS (Amazon Web Services) of blockchain and web3.
What’s surprising about this hike is the rate at which Alchemy’s valuation has grown in such a short period. The business was valued at $3.5 billion in October, following a $250 million Series C financing. And in late April 2021, with an $80 million Series B investment, the business was valued at $505 million. This means the startup’s worth has increased nearly thrice since October and a whopping 19.8x since last April – just over nine months ago. In context, that is a monthly gain of roughly $1.1 billion in value. Not bad for two people who founded the firm five years ago from their flat.
Alchemy’s latest Investment
Alchemy’s recent investment, spearheaded by existing investor Lightspeed Venture Partners and new investor private equity firm Silver Lake, has increased its total funding to $545.5 million since its launch in 2017. Notably, the company’s prior investors — including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coatue Management, DFJ, Pantera, and Lee Fixel’s Addition — participated in the new fundraising round.
Alchemy’s mission serves as a jumping-off point for developers interested in developing products on top of a blockchain or in popular blockchain applications. Its developer platform intends to simplify and reduce the cost of infrastructure development while enhancing apps with “required” developer tools. It will begin accepting subscriptions in August 2020.
Profitable Alchemy has enjoyed explosive growth on its platform since that time. According to sources familiar with Alchemy’s internal operations, the business has boosted its user base by over 50% since closing this current investment. According to one of those sources, the most significant firms exploding in crypto are driven by Alchemy, which means that investing in Alchemy provides a comprehensive index of the whole field. The corporation is essentially the engine that drives the entire industry.
Alchemy declined to provide specific income data but said that the number of teams developing on its platform has increased by more than thrice since its October funding round. Additionally, it claims to have facilitated $105 billion in annually on-chain transactions, more than double the $45 billion it disclosed in October.
Meanwhile, the startup maintains a “lean and mean” mindset. Alchemy has 13 employees at the start of 2021. It presently has slightly fewer than 50 members. Its valuation to employee count is “one of the lowest teams to impact ratios in history,” according to Nikil Viswanathan, Alchemy’s co-founder and CEO.
The company’s rapid expansion coincides with a period of volatility in the cryptocurrency market, which has witnessed several ups and downs over the last year. According to Amy Wu, a partner at Lightspeed, you know you’re onto something unique when your firm continues to grow despite market turmoil, which is precisely what is occurring with Alchemy. There are few precedents for this type of growth, but you can look at how durable firms like Microsoft evolved to understand where Alchemy may go.
It’s reasonable to assume that Alchemy’s growth statistics reflect a significant growth acceleration across the web3 ecosystem.
In the previous 12 months, NFT markets based on Alchemy have paid out more than $1.5 billion in royalties to artists, the firm stated, with over $1 billion flowing in the last three months alone. Viswanathan stated that the business has only used a small portion of the earlier funds. However, with web3 moving at such a rapid clip, the corporation wants to ensure the runway necessary to expand appropriately.
Alchemy’s founders:
Joe Lau, Alchemy’s CTO and co-founder, stated that they believe they are still in the first inning of web3. There was a lot of enthusiasm about the infant internet during the dot.com period. They now have access to the actual internet. They are currently in the infant web3 phase. He said that the internet had not supplanted them with computers. It simply introduced features that were not previously possible. Web3 is not intended to replace web2 but to augment its capabilities and experiences.
According to the company’s founders, Alchemy, despite its profitability and quick expansion, Alchemy continues to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to guarantee it can stay up with the rapid and broad adoption and growth of web3. Lau stated that they want to ensure that they can assist businesses and startups in their growth effectively.
Last year, they witnessed teams that began on Alchemy grow into billion-dollar businesses that serve millions of people worldwide. They think they are only starting and want to assist and support our clients as they expand. While there has been considerable discussion on Twitter about web3 vs. web2.0, Viswanathan and Lau feel there does not need to be such a divide between the two.
Lau stated that at the inception of every technology, everyone is always attempting to decipher it. If you look at the internet in the mid-1990s, people complained that it was so sluggish that no one would use it. However, the fact is that technology advances, and they are attempting to envision what this will look like in ten to fifteen years.
Thousands of new web3 organizations are being created and rapidly expanding. Meanwhile, hundreds of existing Web 2.0 businesses are rethinking their strategy to include web3 on Alchemy. Additionally, tens of thousands of developers utilize blockchain technology to create new products and services.
According to Viswanathan, they’ve seen Alchemy become the de-facto platform for web developers to build on. They’re ecstatic because they believe that this year, the acceleration will transform web3 from a niche technology used by enthusiasts to a ubiquitous technology utilized by everyone, including those unaware.
The firm has aided in powering several industry titans, including OpenSea, Adobe, Dapper Labs, and Crypto Punks. It generates revenue through the sale of computing units. In other words, Alchemy charges its clients based on the amount of processing power they consume.
Lau stated that they think web3 should be available to everybody. The best way to do this is by assisting the incredibly creative developers who are bringing their visions to reality using blockchain technology. Egon Durban, co-CEO of Silver Lake, told TechCrunch through e-mail that his company believes web3 “represents a significant advance in the Internet.”
Durban said, “The market opportunity is enormous, and as one of the fastest-growing technology businesses in history, Alchemy is laying the groundwork for and democratizing this change, bringing it to everyone by accomplishing for web3 development what AWS accomplished for the Internet.”
Alchemy also spearheaded the introduction of Web3 University, an open educational resource for anybody interested in honing their web3 programming abilities. It established Alchemy Ventures to “assist embryonic web3 enterprises in accelerating their growth” during the last three months. It has so far committed $10 million to that venture fund, “with further funds to follow.” It has invested in several companies, including Royal, cryptocurrency exchange FTX (reportedly valued at $32 billion), Genies, Matter Labs, and Arbitron. Some, but not all, of the employees are also consumers.
According to Viswanathan, 2021 was the year developers mainstreamed web3 and built enterprises that improved millions’ lives. They’re doubling down on their commitment to fulfilling developer demands in new locations in 2022, making it easier than ever to unleash the promise of web3.
The firm intends to utilize part of its new money to expand its workforce, which it anticipates will reach around 200 employees by year’s end. Thus far, it has concentrated on high-quality hiring. For instance, 22 of its 27 workers were former entrepreneurs in October, with “several folks having operated multi-hundred person organizations.”
Alchemy is just one of numerous startups that have recently raised capital to fuel cryptocurrency businesses. Fire blocks nearly tripled their worth to $8 billion in six months in January. And in December, Coinbase Ventures invested $4.1 million in Router Protocol, a developer of cross-chain infrastructure.
