The 1inch Network closes a $175 mln Series B round

The funding will be spent on facilitating an entry to the DeFi space for traditional financial institutions, building new protocols, creating additional utilities for the 1INCH token and scaling up the contributor team.

The 1inch team is thrilled to announce a successful closure of a $175 mln series B funding round from institutional investors, led by Amber Group.

Among about 50 investors that participated in the funding event are Jane Street, VanEck, Fenbushi Capital, Alameda Research, Celsius, Nexo, Tribe Capital and Gemini Frontier Fund.

The addition of several dozen new participants to the 1inch Network is set to lead to further decentralization of the 1inch DAO, making it more democratic by allowing everyone’s votes to matter.

“While continuing to keep the existing DeFi audience happy by delivering state-of-the-art products, 1inch also aims to become a gateway for institutions that want to be part of the DeFi space,” says Sergej Kunz, co-founder of the 1inch Network.

“The next $1 trln of assets entering DeFi will come from institutions rather than retail users, and 1inch would like to facilitate entry for them,” he adds. “We have already started work in that direction by attracting some key players from the traditional finance markets, and this collaboration will only accelerate over the next few years.”

Initially, the investment target was set at $70 mln, but, following several developments in the space and a huge demand from valuable backers, a decision was made to increase it to $175 mln.

“A key part of the next phase of DeFi will be providing investors with seamless access to liquidity across different protocols and chains. 1inch has one of the best teams at the forefront of building bridges between fragmented liquidity pools, providing cost-savings and optimizing price discovery for all participants,” says Tiantian Kullander, co-founder and managing partner of Amber Group. “We have been truly impressed by the 1inch team’s pace of product innovation and are extremely excited to partner with them as they continue to build the go-to hub for the DeFi ecosystem.”

The funding will facilitate navigating in the regulatory space for DeFi in Europe and the US in a bid to onboard institutions into 1inch Pro, a compliant product for institutional customers.

The raised funds will also be spent on building new 1inch protocols, expanding the utility of the 1INCH token and scaling up the contributor team. Over the next few years, the team is expected to more than double in size.

In December 2020, the 1inch Network attracted $12 mln from several major investors, including Pantera Capital, ParaFi Capital and Nima Capital. In August 2020, $2.8 mln was raised from a group of institutional investors led by Binance Labs.

More exciting news and updates are coming. Stay tuned!