Valar Ventures leads $25 million round in crypto platform Vauld

Singapore-based crypto-focused financial products platform Vauld today announced it has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. Peter Thiel is a Germany-based billionaire investor popularly known as the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies.

Existing investors, including Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, CMT Digital, Gumi Cryptos, Robert Leshner, and Cadenza Capital, also participated in the round.

According to the statement, Vauld will use the raised funding to scale its team, accelerate international growth and licensing efforts, expanding retail crypto banking and investment offerings.

As part of the deal, Valar Ventures' founding partner Andrew McCormack has joined Vauld's board of directors, Vauld co-founder and CEO Darshan Bathija told The Block.

“Valar’s focus is on transformative financial services companies. What cemented the deal is Vauld’s global positioning and ambitions and the vision Darshan and his team have for building their customers’ wealth through crypto,” said Andrew McCormack of Valar Ventures. “We look forward to Vauld benefiting from our team’s expertise in understanding how to build a global business across emerging tech hubs in Europe, Asia, and North America," he adds.

Founded in 2018 by Darshan Bathija and Sanju Kurian, Vauld is an online platform that enables customers to buy, lend, borrow and trade crypto assets. It provides a suite of financial products to crypto investors, including fixed deposits, asset-backed lending, and borrowing platform.

Speaking on the development, Darshan Bathija, Co-Founder & CEO of Vauld, said:

“We’ve seen great momentum with Vauld and we attribute it to both our technology as well as our customer support—that’s our strongest suit and it’s proven because when customers start using Vauld, they don’t leave."

Prior to the current round, Vauld had raised $2 million in a Seed round in December 202, co-led by Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, among several others. So far, The startup has raised over US$27 million in its funding rounds.

Coinbase Ventures, LuneX Ventures, Paipal Ventures, Robot Ventures, CMT Digital Ventures, Robert Leshner (Founder & CEO of Compound), gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), Pantera Capital, New Form Capital, are among the investors in the startup.

Over the past year, Vauld has expanded its global user base over 200x, and witnessed a 124.4 % increase in AUM from Q1 to Q2 2021, the statement said. While the startup is headquartered in Singapore, It said that most of its employees are from India. “We have a clear foothold in India and Valar’s investment is a true testament to the optimism we share for the large and emergent Indian market," Bathija added.

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