Web3 Startup Wormhole Locks Up $225M At A $2.5B Valuation

Messaging protocol startup Wormhole raised $225 million at a $2.5 billion valuation — the biggest round this year in the Web3 space.

No investor led the round, which included the likes of Coinbase Ventures, Jump Trading, Multicoin Capital and Arrington XRP Capital. Their stakes will consist of token warrants for a yet-to-be-unveiled cryptocurrency, per Fortune.

The team behind Wormhole — whose platform allows developers to communicate across different blockchains — also announced the launch of Wormhole Labs, an independent company that “specializes in building products, tools, and reference implementations” to help grow cross-chain development.

“Nearly three years ago, Wormhole was launched with the vision of a world resembling the one we see today,” said Saeed Badreg, co-founder and CEO of Wormhole Labs. “We reaffirmed our commitment to this vision by launching Wormhole Labs, dedicated to advancing the technology that makes efficient blockchain-to-blockchain communication possible.”

A brief history

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported Jump Trading was parting ways with Wormhole, which had been part of its digital-asset unit Jump Crypto.

Jump Trading invested about $320 million into the crypto project almost two years ago following a massive hack, per the report, but has retrenched away from crypto more recently.

The round is exceedingly large when considering how slow funding has been this year in the Web3 sector. Many investors have backed away from the space as the venture market continues to slow and a series of scandals and regulations have affected the crypto industry.

Last year, nearly $26 billion was invested in VC-backed startups in the Web3 ecosystem. However, this year that number has dropped precipitously, as less than $6.5 billion have been raised globally by startups in the space, per Crunchbase data.