CertiK, the Leading Web3 Security Company, Doubles Its Valuation to $2 Billion in Just 3 Months

April 07, 2022 at 08:00 AM EDT

Insight Partners, Tiger Global, and Advent International lead an $88 Million investment round for blockchain security company CertiK, bringing the company’s valuation to $2 Billion
Interest in the company is as a result of increased crypto losses, with over $1 billion USD lost so far in 2022, while 2021 saw $1.3 billion of crypto assets lost over the entire year.
Additionally, events such as blockchain attacks, rug pulls and more have demonstrated the need for end-to-end security, as offered by CertiK, including auditing, 24/7 threat monitoring, and KYC services.

CertiK, the leading global Web3, and blockchain security firm headquartered in New York, today announced the completion of an oversubscribed $88 million Series B3 financing round. This investment is led by Insight Partners, Tiger Global, and Advent International, with participation from Goldman Sachs and existing investors such as Sequoia and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This latest funding now brings CertiK’s valuation to $2 billion in just 3 months since its last round of funding. This is the fourth round of capital raised by CertiK in the past nine months, altogether totaling $230 million.

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Ronghui Gu is the Founder and CEO of CertiK and a computer science professor at Columbia University. (Photo: Business Wire)

Blockchain security continues to see strong demand, which has led to substantial growth at CertiK as the leader in the category. Following a substantial loss of $1.3 billion in cryptocurrency in 2021, the year 2022 is already continuing that trend, with cryptocurrency losses predicted to be much higher than last year. Within the last three months, the crypto industry witnessed over $1 billion in cryptocurrency losses due to four major bridge attacks (Ronin Network, Wormhole, Qubit Finance, and Meter.io), as well as various flash loan attacks; both types of attacks of which seem to be trending this year.

CertiK’s mission is to secure the Web3 world. It delivers on this mission through an end-to-end set of security services, providing clients with a one-stop shop for all their security needs. To date, CertiK has protected over $300 billion worth of crypto assets for well over 3,200 enterprise clients. CertiK’s auditing service provides pre-deployment auditing and formal verification for smart contracts, blockchain protocols, and Web3 apps, while Skynet provides on-chain 24/7 active monitoring of security threats. CertiK also recently launched its Know Your Customer (“KYC”) and fraud investigation service this year. CertiK believes KYC is the missing link in most competitive offers for helping prevent malicious intent i.e., rug-pulls, by owners of a project. Overall, CertiK’s leaderboard enables transparency for its community and builds both trust and visibility for the projects that are listed there.

CertiK’s products and services continue to show strong demand, supporting an incredible growth of revenue for the company. For the year 2021, CertiK saw its revenue surge 12x, while its profits surged by 3,000x. Even with the temporary downturn in the crypto market, CertiK’s 2022 Q1, Year-over-Year Web3 security revenue grew by 4x. According to CoinMarketCap data, CertiK serves 60% of all listed blockchain projects that use third-party security audit services.

CertiK’s leadership and tremendous growth have already been widely recognized by the industry. In March 2022, CertiK received awards for the CB Insights Blockchain 50 award - listed as the only blockchain security firm, and the Globee Awards - Cybersecurity Global Excellence Award.

“CertiK is a mission-critical blockchain cybersecurity platform in a massive market and has already become a clear leader in the industry with a high-quality product that provides all-round security for blockchain, smart contracts, and Web3,” said Steve Ward, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “We look forward to partnering with CertiK’s best in class founding team, complete with a team of leading crypto security thought leaders as they continue to grow and Scale-Up.”

“We are excited to invest in CertiK as a leader in developing critically needed cybersecurity solutions for the Web3/DeFi market,” said Eric Noeth, Partner at Advent International. “The decentralized Internet that runs on the blockchain has experienced high levels of security breaches and is in dire need of the kind of effective solutions that CertiK provides. We look forward to partnering with the CertiK team as it continues its tremendous momentum in making blockchains safer and more performant while also providing consumers with much-needed visibility into security considerations across new and existing projects.”

“Goldman Sachs is excited to be an investor in CertiK, a leading security platform for the blockchain and Web3 ecosystem," said Oli Harris, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs. "As we see continued growth in use cases and assets on decentralized applications the solutions being built by CertiK will be integral to securing the ecosystem, helping to accelerate innovation and adoption of these novel technologies.”

This new round of funding, coupled with revenue generated from KYC, Skynet, and Security Leaderboard services, will be used for the development and operation of more innovative and data-driven security products. “Given increasing trends in rug-pulls, we now see KYC playing an important role in Web3 security,” said CertiK Founder and CEO, Ronghui Gu. “KYC, together with Smart contract auditing and 24/7 monitoring of threats, will further strengthen our offer around end-to-end Web3 security services.”

CertiK continues to hire top-tier product and development talent to help deliver on its end-to-end product strategy. CertiK recently invested in the hire of Kevin Liu, CertiK’s Chief Product Officer. Mr. Liu is an experienced product and engineering leader, with over 20 years of global experience in the technology industry, with a focus on media and telecoms. Before CertiK, Kevin was a founding member of FreeWheel (a Comcast company) where he held various leadership positions, including VP of Product and VP of Engineering. He also served as General Manager, China, and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of ads, at iflix. As CPO at CertiK, Kevin will be responsible for leading product strategy across the company, building the groundwork for initiatives in securing blockchain applications, and providing insights for the community, project owners, and other participants.

About CertiK

CertiK’s mission is to secure the Web3 world. Starting with blockchain, CertiK applies cutting-edge innovations from academia into Enterprise, enabling mission-critical applications to be built with security and correctness. Headquartered in New York City, CertiK was founded by computer science professors Ronghui Gu and Zhong Shao. CertiK is backed by industry leaders, including Insight Partners, Tiger Global, Sequoia, Coatue Management, Advent International, Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed, Hillhouse Capital, Binance, Coinbase Ventures, and more.