Auradine raises $81 million in Series A round led by Celesta Capital and Mayfield, with Marathon Digital also investing

The privacy- and AI-focused blockchain project Auradine closed a Series A round of $81 million led by venture firms Celesta Capital and Mayfield.

Marathon Digital Holdings, a cryptocurrency mining company, also invested in the startup alongside Stanford University, Cota Capital and DCVC.

Auradine is developing ‘breakthrough solutions in scalability, resilience, and security’.

The company is based in Santa Clara, California, and counts more than 40 employees, including software engineers and cybersecurity specialists from Palo Alto Networks, Marvell, Intel, Google and Wells Fargo.

“Our first product will be a system-level software solution with cloud-storage management capabilities, oriented toward blockchain security applications,” said Rajiv Khimani, co-founder and CEO of Auradine.

The startup plans to roll out its first product in the summer of 2023 and will focus on serving clients in the financial sector and healthcare.

Khimani previously was a cofounder and CEO of Innovium, a silicon-chip maker for cloud companies. In 2021, Marvell Technology acquired the firm for $1.1 billion.

Shriram Vishwanathan, managing partner at Celesta Capital, and Navin Chadha, a director at Mayfield, will also join Auradine’s board.

Earlier in May, River Financial raised $35 million in a Series B round led by Kingsway Capital. The company offers a range of Bitcoin-focused services: brokerage, custody solutions, mining, wallets, and the infrastructure components for interacting with Lightning Network.