Roll-up developers StarkWare to raise $100M at a $6B valuation ๐จ This article is 3 years old...
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Roll-up developers StarkWare to raise $100M at a $6B valuation
The Israeli company behind StarkWare, developers of Ethereum ZK-rollup technology, is finishing a funding round of at least $100 million, at a $6 billion valuation.
2 min read
Updated: Mar. 10, 2022 at 5:38 pm UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
Just three months after the last series C funding round, the Israeli company StarkWare is raising another $100 million at a $6 billion valuation, according to a report by the Israeli tech outlet Calcalist. The last series C round closed in November, brought in $50 million at a $2 billion valuation, thus tripling the company valuation in just three months.
StarkWare is a key player in the Ethereum ecosystem, developing so-called Zero-Knowledge ZK-roll-up scaling solutions on top of the Ethereum mainnet blockchain. This technology brings faster and cheaper transactions for Ethereum users.
Two ZK scaling solutions on the market
So far StarkWare has brought two scaling solution products to the general market. StarkEx is a permissioned tailor-made Ethereum scaling engine custom-built for specific applications, and StarkNet which is a general purpose permissionless decentralized ZK-rollup network that was fully launched in the last week of February. StarkNet allows any developer to build decentralized applications on the network, like on Ethereum. Such scaling networks aim to reduce gas fees.
Before the series C funding round in November, StarkWare raised $75 million in a Series B funding round a year ago, valued at the time at just several hundreds of millions.
According to Calcalist, the companyโs shareholders include Amnon Shashua, Technion, Coinbase, Intel Capital, and Altshuler Shaham. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, also invested in the company. The Series C was led by Sequoia Capital and also included Founders Fund, Paradigm, Three Arrows, and Alameda Research.
It is still unknown who will be participating in the companyโs latest round, but according to company insiders โthereโs a sense that something is cooking.โ
โThe guys who are bringing about a huge changeโ
โThings move so fast here, so while Iโd normally dismiss talk of tripling the valuation after three or four months, itโs quite possible,” said the company insider, speaking on condition of anonymity with The Block. “I donโt know exactly whatโs happening, but thereโs a sense that something is cooking. The team is definitely on a high, feeling that its products are less viewed as possible fixes for blockchain scaling and more as the ones that are going to win out.โ
โItโs surreal. It just looks like another Israeli high-tech office here, but weโre seen in the crypto world as the guys who are bringing about a huge change. There are constant rumors that this person or such-and-such a fund wants to invest. The company doesnโt need the money so it has rejected many offers, but if a really attractive deal comes along, it could well be progressing,โ the anonymous source continues.
Author 
Laszlo Dobos
Educated in computer engineering, Laszlo began developing an interest in crypto and blockchain technology back in 2013.
