In an impressive Series B round of funding led by Draper Espirit this week, Ledger raised $75 million. This is a whopping 1071% increase from last year’s Series A round where they raised just $7 million. Several factors have attributed the massive gap in percentage increase to cryptomania where everyone wants a bite of the crypto cake.
For those with substantial investments in crypto, they would’ve likely come across the hardware wallet products from Ledger. Crypto investors seeking for cold storage, long-term HODLing and maximum security always opt for hardware wallets. The French blockchain startup, Ledger, happens to be the most popularly used one because of its topnotch security. Solution to being safe from hacking? Go Ledger.
New investors who partook in this week’s round include FirstMark Capital, Korelya Capital and Cathay Innovation. While existing investors who also participated include GDTRE, CapHorn Invest and Digital Currency Group. Information coming from Ledger, has it that the round was oversubscribed and was the largest raised by a cryptocurrency startup which didn’t use the conventional ICO platform.
To give you an idea of what makes this fundraising impressive, it is worth noting that Ledger sold over a million hardware wallets in 2017. That’s a staggering figure compared with the just 30,000 wallets that were sold in 2016.
Familiarizing yourself with these figures is crucial to understanding Ledger’s success. As at 2016, few persons believed in the positive growth of cryptos. But the boom in crypto in 2017, brought an influx of surplus customers to Ledger. In fact, they soon were unable to meet up with orders. As at now, it takes over two months to get an ordered Ledger delivered.
So, if you’ve been wondering, why is Ledger raising funds? It’s to help them expand their production resources so those backlog of orders can be cleared. This and coupled with the fact that Ledger is running on profit must have made the blockchain startup, having 80+ employees, attractive to the investors. Ledger currently has three offices in San Francisco, Paris and Vierzon.
In addition to increasing production resources, Ledger would be utilizing the funds to launch a security solution project, called Ledger Vault. Prospective customers for this project are banks, family businesses and hedge funds in need of security solutions for their crypto investments. They are the ones who will need multi-wallet, multi-signature, multi-account and timelock features.
