The hardware wallet maker, Ledger, announced on Thursday that it raised $75 million in Series B funding to scale up its business. This comes nearly a year after the company raised $7 million and on the heels of a massive surge of interest around the world in December. Based in France with offices in San Francisco, Ledger currently has 82 employees.
The new round was led by UK-based Draper Esprit, Cathay Innovation, FirstMark Capital, and Draper Venture Network. Existing investors Digital Currency Group, GDTRE, and CapHorn Invest, also participated.
"These funds will be used to keep investing significantly in R&D while scaling our operations and deploying our teams globally," Ledger CEO, Eric Larcheveque, said. The most important expense will be ramping up production of wallets and seeing 33-fold demand increase between 2016 and 2017 at Ledger alone. The press statement mentioned they would be building a new product, dubbed the Ledger Vault.
Ledger is one of the two premiere producers of hardware wallets, alongside Trezor. The company sold over a million wallets in 2017, a colossal increase from the 30,000 wallets they sold in 2016. There have been shortages reported throughout 2017, and new deliveries are not expected for a few months.
Support for Ledger is increasing, as Radar Relay announced on Thursday that they would support transfers with Ledger.
It might be difficult for some people to be impressed with a meager $75 million fundraising round when compared to some ICOs, but it is the largest venture investment in the industry so far. It is a clear vote of confidence as no matter what the value of certain coins may be, they need to be stored somewhere. It also implies that many of the security demands regarding storage have been met by the Parisian startup. Demand will likely only increase as people become more familiar with how cryptocurrencies work. One million wallets might soon seem paltry.
The new round was led by UK-based Draper Esprit, Cathay Innovation, FirstMark Capital, and Draper Venture Network. Existing investors Digital Currency Group, GDTRE, and CapHorn Invest, also participated.
"These funds will be used to keep investing significantly in R&D while scaling our operations and deploying our teams globally," Ledger CEO, Eric Larcheveque, said. The most important expense will be ramping up production of wallets and seeing 33-fold demand increase between 2016 and 2017 at Ledger alone. The press statement mentioned they would be building a new product, dubbed the Ledger Vault.
Ledger is one of the two premiere producers of hardware wallets, alongside Trezor. The company sold over a million wallets in 2017, a colossal increase from the 30,000 wallets they sold in 2016. There have been shortages reported throughout 2017, and new deliveries are not expected for a few months.
Support for Ledger is increasing, as Radar Relay announced on Thursday that they would support transfers with Ledger.
It might be difficult for some people to be impressed with a meager $75 million fundraising round when compared to some ICOs, but it is the largest venture investment in the industry so far. It is a clear vote of confidence as no matter what the value of certain coins may be, they need to be stored somewhere. It also implies that many of the security demands regarding storage have been met by the Parisian startup. Demand will likely only increase as people become more familiar with how cryptocurrencies work. One million wallets might soon seem paltry.