Messari Lands $21 Million Series A Investment

NEW YORK — Messari, a crypto market intelligence company, has closed $21 million in Series A funding led by Point72 Ventures. The investment will help the company expand the global reach of its Pro and Enterprise product suites, triple the size of its engineering and research teams, and introduce new offerings that streamline participation in decentralized projects and their communities.

The round includes support from existing investors Coinbase Ventures, Uncork Capital, and Underscore VC, as well as new strategic investors Alameda Research, Blockchain Ventures, CMS Holdings, Gemini Frontier Fund, Winklevoss Capital, Kraken Ventures, and Nascent. Prominent angel investors include former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer and Anchorage Co-Founder and President, Diogo Monica.

The three-year-old company is helmed by Crypto Entrepreneur and CEO Ryan Selkis. Prior to launching Messari, Selkis was on the founding team of Digital Currency Group where he managed the firm’s seed investing activity, and CoinDesk, where he led the company’s restructuring and annual Consensus conferences. Selkis’s vision for Messari’s hiring and offering expansion will formalize with the added backing.

“We are proud to partner with an exceptional syndicate of new and existing investors that will help usher in Messari’s next phase of growth,” said Ryan Selkis, Messari’s co-founder & CEO. “Thousands of investors, crypto enterprises, and token projects already rely on our products and services to conduct industry diligence and participate in the emerging crypto economy. This new funding reinforces the value we have created for our early crypto-native customers and highlights the opportunity we have to solve some of crypto’s most challenging information and compliance problems for new institutional entrants as well.”

As part of the transaction, Adam Carson, an operating partner at Point72 Ventures, has joined the Messari board of directors. Messari is Point72 Ventures’ first investment in the crypto space.

“While investor participation in the crypto industry has grown exponentially over the past three years, current crypto research and analysis tools are still lacking the sophisticated signals and data that more advanced investors need,” said Carson. “Messari is filling that much-needed space, creating a central access point for reliable information for the entire crypto ecosystem.”

Used by companies including Coinbase, Gemini, BlockTower, and Chainalysis, Messari provides its users with comprehensive product offerings that marry formerly disparate market intelligence functions into one all-encompassing platform. Since its founding in January 2018, Messari has launched an array of qualitative and quantitative data, research, and compliance products for crypto funds, infrastructure providers, and token creators. This past year’s surge in enthusiasm for crypto assets has also brought two new user bases to the forefront: institutional investors and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).

In addition to broadening its crypto enterprise offerings, Messari’s new capital will further plans to expand its institutional footprint. This includes its recently launched Messari Asset Coverage Support (“MACS”) product, a research tool that simplifies onboarding, integration, and support of new crypto assets for institutional compliance and product teams. The investment will also allow the company to expand its community research and educational content, including the production of Mainnet 2021, Messari’s annual summit, which the company will host September 20-22 in New York City.

“Point72 Ventures is an ideal partner for us as we work to onboard new legacy financial institutions to our products,” said Selkis. “At the same time, the support from a wide range of crypto’s leading strategic investors puts us in a strong position to expand our product suite for token creators, and provide services that help their projects get better integrated into core industry infrastructure.”