Amber Group becomes newest crypto unicorn after $100m financing
10:52, 21 June 2021
Amber Group, a cryptocurrency trading and technology firm based in Hong Kong, announced on Sunday that it raised $100m in a Series B financing round.
The new financing was closed at a pre-money valuation of $1bn, ten times higher compared to the Series A round in 2019 when it raised $28m, according to a company press release quoted by DealStreetAsia.com.
The Series B round was led by China Renaissance and joined by Tiger Brokers, Tiger Global Management, Arena Holdings, Tru Arrow Partners, Sky9 Capital, DCM Ventures, and Gobi Partners.
Amber Group, which went into crypto in 2017, passed $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) in April this year, as the price of Bitcoin climbed to an all-time high of close to $65,000. In the meantime, the bitcoin almost halved to $33,000.
However, the downturn in cryptocurrency prices hasn’t affected the company’s development plans.
Money to continue expansion
Amber Group co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said the company will continue to expand global operations to meet client demand and develop market solutions for the world’s leading crypto investors and companies.
The Hong Kong-based company provides trading and asset management services to 500 institutional clients, including family offices, funds and high-net-worth individuals.
In the third quarter of 2020, the company launched a mobile app, widening its scope from institutional clients to retail consumers. The trading app has so far accumulated more than 100,000 registered users.
Amber Group started with a small team of less than 10 in 2017 and now has more than 330 employees globally, with plans to bring more on board.
The company has been profitable since inception and reached annualised revenues of $500m based on January to April figures, according to Wu’s statements quoted by Forkast.news. It also accounts for 2 to 3% of total trading volumes in major spot and derivative markets and figures continue to grow.
High interest for crypto players
Despite the recent drop in crypto asset prices, the interest in crypto trading and services firms remains high.
The financing raised by Amber Group comes after a $40m series A funding round successfully closed by Hong Kong-based Babel Finance and led by Zoo Capital, Sequoia Capital China, Dragonfly Capital, BAI Capital and Bertelsmann, and Tiger Global Management in May.
More recently, San Francisco-based Bitwise Asset Management, the world’s largest cryptocurrency index fund manager, raised $70m in a Series B funding round led by tech investor Elad Gil and crypto venture fund Electric Capital. The round valued the company at $500m.
Read more: Crypto fund manager Bitwise raises m
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