Merkle Science, a predictive crypto risk and intelligence platform has announced an extension of more than $19 million to its Series A funding round, bringing the total raised to over $24 million.
New investments will help accelerate the company’s growth and will be used for expansion across the U.S. and Europe, as well as for R&D in emerging segments such as analytics and forensics across NFTs, DeFi, and cryptocurrency bridge protocols.
Merkle Science’s solution suite screens over 3 million digital assets per month and covers cryptocurrencies representing 96% of the current $1.13 trillion crypto market cap. It uses machine learning to drive transaction monitoring and risk mitigation for AML compliance, offers a crypto forensics tool that tracks stolen funds and enables investigations, enhanced due diligence and entity reporting, and crypto compliance and investigations training.
BECO Capital, Susquehanna affiliate (Darrow Holdings), and K3 Ventures co-led the extension, with participation from new investors including Republic Crypto, Summer Capital, 500 StartUps APAC, and US, Aspen Digital, HashKey Capital, and Coinhako. They were joined by existing investors Kraken Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Kenetic, Uncorrelated Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Lucy Gazmararian of Token Bay Capital, and Libertus Capital.
Several market vectors have converged to drive exponential global demand for the company’s solutions. This includes the rapid adoption of blockchain technology across the financial services industry, including on the part of many large institutions; the escalating impact and cost of hacks and exploits, such as the Nomad and the Ronin Bridge exploits; and increased regulatory scrutiny, such as NYDFS’s Virtual Currency Guidance, FINCEN’s Advisory on Illicit Activity Involving Convertible Virtual Currency and the sanctioning of Tornado cash and Blender.io by the US treasury.
These developments, together with the government’s enforcement-first approach and enormous penalties recently issued to companies such as Robinhood and BlockFi, have made clear the need for stronger and more widespread compliance, risk management, and forensics solutions in the space.
Merkle Science meets this need by providing next-generation crypto threat detection, risk mitigation, investigations, and compliance solutions to financial institutions, crypto businesses, DeFi participants, NFT platforms, and government agencies.
“We’ve seen over 300% growth over the past year, despite the onset of a severe bear market in crypto and throughout the broader global economy. Web3 companies, financial institutions, and regulators are continuing to invest heavily in crypto compliance and forensics. Recent high-profile events in the space, including the failure of large companies and massive hacks, are a clear indicator of the need for much more robust risk management, forensics, and compliance for digital assets.”
– Merkle Science CEO & Co-Founder Mriganka Pattnaik
To support its goals, Merkle Science recently added to its leadership team, which features talent from Paypal, Luno, Bank of America, the FBI, and the DOJ, with new Chief Revenue Officer Fernando Castellanos – a New York-based sales leader and former Forter VP experienced in scaling organizations.
