Wormhole raises $225 million at a $2.5 billion valuation

The cross-chain protocol Wormhole closed a $225 million funding round, valuing the startup at $2.5 billion. The news was reported by Yahoo Finance.

Among the lead investors were: Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Jump Trading, ParaFi, Dialectic, Borderless Capital, and Arrington Capital.

“We are excited to bring to market even more innovative products next year, and we look forward to continued support for our ecosystem of developers who use these tools daily to grow their businesses and create a great user experience,” said Dan Reiser, chief operating officer of the Wormhole Foundation.

The startup’s chief commercial officer Robinson Berki backed his colleagues’ view, noting “a favourable market position and opportunities for growth”.

Wormhole Foundation also announced the official launch of Wormhole Labs — an independent technology company that specialises in creating products and tools and reference implementations aimed at cross-chain activity.

The Wormhole protocol was launched in 2021, and since then the network processes more than 2 million cross-chain transactions daily, worth an estimated $35 billion.

Earlier Jump Trading spun off the cross-chain Wormhole bridge into a separate business. The platform’s top executives, including CEO Said Badrega and COO Antonio Ramirez, left to run the project as an independent organisation.

In early 2022, hackers drained from the Wormhole pool 120,000 WETH (~$320 million at the time). Within a day Jump Crypto reimbursed the project’s losses.

In February 2023 the company returned the stolen digital assets with the help of the DeFi platform Oasis.