DeFi Firm BloXroute Raises $70M to Fund Expansion in SoftBank-Led Round
BloXroute, a company that facilitates faster decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions, completed a $70 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 to further its expansion plans.
The investment will enable the company to add to its team and extend its reach, bloXroute co-founder and CEO Uri Klarman said in a statement on Tuesday.The Chicago-based company describes itself as the first provider of a blockchain distribution network, or BDN, for DeFi traders on Ethereum, Polygon and the Binance Smart Chain.A BDN is a global network of servers that helps speed the way transactions and blocks distribute for multiple blockchain systems, enabling users to make more strategic and profitable decisions, Klarman told CoinDesk in a statement.“We foresee exciting use cases to emerge in industries such as [non-fungible tokens], blockchain-based metaverses and gaming,” said Aaron Wong, investor at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We are thrilled to partner with Uri and the team to help build a blockchain superhighway with uncongested performance.”Robert Kaplan, an investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the bloXroute board.Tokyo-based investment management firm SoftBank has been pouring money into crypto companies. In the first quarter of 2022 alone it invested in Consensys, Aleo, Polygon, Blockdaemon and FTX.Financial service provider Lightspeed, crypto investment firms Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital and digital asset trading firm GSR were among other investors that participated.