Andalusia Labs Achieves Unicorn Valuation

Weekly Recap

Crypto funding remained elevated for the third consecutive week, totaling $271 million, a slight drop from last week’s $289 million. The most funded category was Web3 and NFTs, largely due to a $140 million round closed by Line Next, the Web3 unit of the Japanese messaging app Line. Crescendo Equity Partners, a Peter Thiel-backed private equity firm, led the investment round. Infrastructure was the most popular category from a deal count perspective, tallying 12 deals worth $69 million, including our Deal of the Week, Andalusia Labs.

The majority of this week’s funding rounds failed to disclose the deal stage, but Series A and Seed rounds accounted for 33% of total funding and 41% of the deal count. There was one Series B round completed by Lolli, a cashback Bitcoin rewards company, marking the second consecutive week with a successful Series B round in a year that has only seen thirteen total. It will be interesting to watch if there is an uptick in mid to late-stage deals in 2024.

Funding By Category

Funding By Stage

Deal of the Week

Andalusia Labs, formerly known as Risk Harbor, raised $48 million in a Series A round from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mubadala Capital, valuing the risk-management infrastructure company at over $1 billion. Lightspeed Venture Partners is a prominent private equity firm investing in companies like Affirm, Epic Games, and Stripe, while Mubadala Capital is a subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company, the behemoth sovereign investment group with over $280 billion in AUM. Andalusia Labs plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, enhance institutional partnerships, and continue its global expansion. In conjunction with the funding round, Andalusia Labs has announced the establishment of its global headquarters in Abu Dhabi, signifying the company’s commitment to its global footprint.

Why is this Deal of the Week?

Andalusia Labs is a development company with a suite of leading technology solutions addressing digital asset security. Its three main products include Karak, an Ethereum L2 built for global financial services prioritizing financial security; Subsea, a risk management marketplace for digital assets; and Watchtower, an institutional security platform. Karak is the base layer that enables Subsea and Watchtower to work. Subsea utilizes an algorithmic, transparent, and impartial protocol to reduce dependency on trusted intermediaries and provide purchase protection against network vulnerabilities. Subsea has secured over $1 billion in digital assets and integrated with over 100 chains and applications. Watchtower is Andalusia Labs’ security platform, allowing institutions to invest in a risk-aware manner with real-time simulations driven by on-chain data. Andalusia Labs is striving to set industry security standards and instill confidence and resilience across crypto.

Selected Deals

Liquidium, a startup focusing on ordinal lending and borrowing, raised $1.25 million in a pre-seed funding round with participation from Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Side Door Ventures, Actai Ventures, Sora Ventures, and UXTO Management. Bitcoin ordinals are images or data inscribed on individual satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, creating a Bitcoin NFT. The popularity of ordinals has grown significantly over the last year, and with it, demand for Bitcoin DeFi services. Liquidium allows users to borrow against their ordinals, enhancing utility and increasing the liquidity of the whole network. Liquidium has earmarked the funds for developing and refining its platform to provide investors with the most user-friendly experience possible. 

Hackless, a blockchain security company, closed a $1.2 million undisclosed investment round led by DaoMaker, Insignius Capital, Cosima Capital, among others. Security is of paramount importance in crypto and an area that needs a lot of improvement if the industry is to continue growing. Hackless offers anti-sandwich capabilities, transaction simulating, wallet rescue, rug-pull monitoring, and others. Together, Hackless protects users’ funds with enhanced security and transaction monitoring. Hackless will use the investment to improve its solutions and continue its mission of contributing to a safer, more secure digital asset ecosystem.

NFT Perp, an NFT perpetual futures platform, raised $3 million in a Series A round led by 1kx. Other investors included Maven 11, Mechanism Capital, and Spencer Ventures. NFT Perp allows crypto traders to speculate on the value of NFT collections by taking long or short positions against white-listed collections through its platform’s blend of order book and AMM features. A pain point of high-value NFTs is the inability to hedge against their value due to their non-fungible nature. NFT gives holders a way to hedge their exposure and preserve value in the case of the collection selling off. The funding will be used to continue developing the platform ahead of its v2 launch.