CertiK Closes $60M Round, Raises Total of $148M in 2 Weeks

Web 3 and blockchain security company CertiK has closed a $60 million funding round backed by SoftBank Vision Fund and Tiger Global. The funding came two weeks after CertiK announced an $88 million round led by Insight Partners at a $2 billion valuation.

CertiK is profitable and hasn’t touched the capital from its last fundraise, Ronghui Gu, CertiK founder and CEO, told CoinDesk in an interview.

The funding establishes partnerships with two global investing giants that can provide connections to traditional companies who want to enter the Web 3 space.

CertiK marked the first time the venture arm of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank invested in a Web 3 security company.

Read more: Blockchain Security Firm CertiK Just Raised $88M, SEC Docs Show

Blockchain security lapses have made headlines this year and led to over $1 billion in losses. In February, blockchain bridge Wormhole lost $326 million in an exploit. Last month, Ronin Network, the infrastructure under popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, suffered a $625 million breach. The Beanstalk stablecoin protocol then became the second notable attack in a month and lost $182 million.

Headquartered in New York City, CertiK offers a set of end-to-end security solutions that can make the company a one-stop shop for customers. Products include code auditing, threat monitoring and asset tracing. The company is currently developing new products.

The security service was founded in 2018 by Gu, a computer science professor at Columbia University, and Yale University professor Zhong Shao.

CertiK holds more than 60% of the market for Web 3 companies who have used a third-party security service, said Gu. However, roughly 90% of companies in the space have never used such a service, which Gu finds “really scary.”

The increasing complexity of Web 3 applications between the smart contracts and layer 2 technology used to scale the project call for complex cyber defense, said Gu.

Security services aren’t easy to find for new Web 3 projects due to the limited number of providers and the often high costs. CertiK wants to scale its security auditing and verification solutions to make them available to even small Web 3 companies.

“We really want to scale this business to all the players in the blockchain and Web 3 industries,” Gu explained.

Read more: Blockchain Security Firm CertiK Raises $80M at Nearly $1B Valuation