Alchemy Becomes Crypto Unicorn With Andreessen-Led Funding Round

(Bloomberg) -- Alchemy Insights Inc., whose technology powers projects ranging from decentralized-finance startups to NFT platforms, said it closed a $250 million funding round that was led by Andreessen Horowitz Crypto. 

The investment values the four-year-old San Francisco-based company at $3.5 billion, up from about $500 million only six months ago, the firm said. That makes it one of the largest crypto unicorns, or private companies with valuations of more than $1 billion. Even in the exploding crypto market, Alchemy is growing faster than most, with 1,500% revenue growth in the past six months, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nikil Viswanathan said in an interview. He wouldn’t disclose absolute revenue. 

The firm, whose customers include fellow unicorns such as gaming provider Axie Infinity, world’s biggest NFT marketplace OpenSea, and games and NFT provider Dapper Labs Inc. -- is “very profitable,” Viswanathan said, and hasn’t spent any of the money raised in its last round. He didn’t comment on specific profit levels.

“It’s one of the fastest growing companies we’ve ever seen in any category,” said Ali Yahya, a general partner at Andreessen. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures are joining Andreessen as new investors, with additional participation from existing investors Coatue Management LLC, Addition, DFJ and Pantera Capital. 

The company’s prior investors also include former Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the onetime chairman of Walt Disney Co. It’s raised $345 million to date.

Alchemy, which provides developer tools and cloud computing power to let anyone build blockchain-based apps, is benefiting from a rush to expand thousands of crypto services, tackling everything from lending to NFTs. Blockchain-related distributed financial services, for example, have seen investor funds locked in their apps pass $100 billion, up from about $21 billion a year ago, according to data tracker DeFi Pulse. The rush is partly fueled by the surge in crypto coin prices this year, with bellwether Bitcoin nearly doubling.

Alchemy offers software as a service, with the initial service tier available free of charge. 

“If you are in a village in Africa, you should be able to develop for blockchain for free,” Viswanathan said. “Our goal is to make blockchain available to everyone on the planet.” 

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