DeFi Firm BloXroute Raises $70M to Fund Expansion in SoftBank-Led Round

The investment will enable the company to add to its team and extend its reach.

By Camomile Shumba Apr 12, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. EDT Updated May 11, 2023 at 2:03 p.m. EDT

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 ConsensysAleoPolygonBlockdaemon 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.

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